


With the Dawn of Redeeming Grace

by AliLamba



Series: With the Dawn of Redeeming Grace [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bellarke Xmas, Christmas Fluff, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, F/M, First snowfall, Humor, Jasper the Bellarke Fanboy, Learning to Skate/Toboggan, Mistletoe mishap, Naughty/Nice AU, Romance, Secret Santa AU, Xmas on the Ark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliLamba/pseuds/AliLamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve Days of Christmas - Bellarke Style, for Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. DAY ONE: secret santa au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas, so prepare for parties with grown-ups.

Bellamy frowns at the present he can’t wrap.

It wasn’t his stupid idea anyway, Office Secret Santa. That hadn’t even been Clarke’s brainchild, and as co-manager, he feels like the idea really should have come from one of them. Instead it had been the crackpot idea of Jasper and Monty, who had been doing Secret Santa (and picking each other on purpose) every year since they were still peeing their pants.

He doesn’t want to be sour grapes about it, but he picked the absolute hardest person to gift for.

Clarke Griffin.

The name had been taunting him ever since Jasper and Monty had ambushed him in the break room with the basket of folded strips of paper and forced him to choose. He had wondered if they’d been smoking pot during their lunch break again ( _Cannabis Card my foot, chronic anxiety related to PTSD my foot_ ) because they looked so determined to see him pick a name.

And now it is officially the office Christmas Party, and he officially has to hand over his offering at Clarke’s first holiday event in her new job.

She is going to hate it.

***

Everyone stayed after business hours to help put up decorations and set the mood. There are candles on people’s desks now instead of staplers, and twinkle lights warm the space instead of the overhead fluorescents. Miller is playing bartender this year, and he’s turned the receptionist’s desk into such a legitimate-looking bar Bellamy wonders whether he’s been practicing.

Raven isn’t letting anyone touch the music. She sits next to the laptop hooked into the speakers with a permanent scowl, daring anyone to try to request Justin Bieber.

Family members start showing up around six-thirty, so Clarke gets swept up in taking her parents on a tour around the office. Very briefly he’s introduced:

“And this is Bellamy Blake. My co-manager.”

Clarke’s mom’s eyebrows shoot up as if putting some pieces together. “Oh,” she says, not very good at hiding things. “Bellamy, hello.” She casts a quick glance to her husband, and they share a tight-lipped smile. “My name is Abby, and this is my husband, Jake. Clarke has told us so much about you.”

Whatever her initial assessment, Abby Griffin would likely be a skilled politician. She recovers her shock a little too easily, and Bellamy drops their hands.

“Hopefully not too much,” he warns, as a joke. Abby and Jake laugh politely, and Clarke sends him a flat smile.

_You hate me. I get it._

Again he wishes he’d picked any other name from the basket. “Well you should know that your daughter has been really wonderful for this firm.” Abby and Jake beam at their daughter, and Clarke looks down at her shoes. “Really, just great. I know we got off to a pretty rough start…” She looks up at him, and a smirk touches the corner of her mouth. “…But I think nowadays we make a pretty good team.”

She looks genuinely surprised to hear him say it.

“Well on that note,” she says, leadingly. Her parents turn their attention to her. “I think we’re ready for another drink. Bellamy.” Clarke nods to him in parting, and her parents do the same.

Bellamy grimaces when he sees the back of them. He probably sounded like a total idiot, and he replays the conversation in his head to check for errors.

She is really going to hate his present.

***

By seven-thirty he’s finally received a text from his sister, with a picture that might as well be captioned #sorrynotsorry. He’s pretty sure there is a hazy Bon Jovi in the background.

Jasper and Maya have started a small dance floor in the conference room, and most people are joining in. Raven’s boyfriend Wick shows up and even manages to drag her away from her post (after she double-checks to make sure three hours’ worth of music is still queued up and ready to go).

Clarke hovers at the periphery with a glass of wine, declining the few times one of her employees asks her to dance. He wonders whether she’s thinking about Finn. They had to let him go, he tells himself yet again, even though the decision was both of theirs in the end, and even though they’d made that decision months ago. Still, he’d known they had dated, and seeing all the couples on the dance floor couldn’t make her feel good.

Probably about the right time to give her his gift. There was probably nowhere to go but up, right?

Bellamy swallows the lump in his throat and goes to his office, ignoring the door his basically shared a hinge with. Clarke’s office might have matched his in size and general location, but the light was on in hers, and his office was almost perpetually dark. Bellamy navigates the layout easily and opens his top desk drawer. He pushes aside the stray envelopes, until he finds the small bundle that fits into the ten dollar budget he was allowed. Bellamy pockets the item and closes the drawer, and then walks to the entrance of his office to make sure she hasn’t moved.

It is then that he finally notices she’d changed out of her work clothes. He remembers now that most people had been mysteriously absent when he’d been looking for something that would double as wrapping paper at 5:45pm, and now he knows why.

Clarke is wearing a black velvet dress. It hugs her curves, creating a womanly shape from the gentle v-shaped neckline to the pencil skirt. She’d complemented the look with tasteful gold jewelry, and she’d done something with her hair and face… Somehow she looks as if she were glowing.

Bellamy swallows the recurrent lump, and his hands tighten around the drink in his hand and the gift in his pocket.

His reputation in the office was someone to never back down from a fight, and he doesn’t want to disappoint anyone now. Bellamy starts walking toward her, knowing that he can always leave as soon as he delivers his obligatory gift.

“Hey,” he grunts, to get her attention. He sounds gruffer than he needs to, but it gets the job done. She turns to face him.

Bellamy swallows his pride and assumes his position next to her. He’s angled just a little bit toward her, enough to imply that he might have somewhere to be soon.

“Hey Bellamy, I was just starting to look for you.” Her voice sounds too pleasant, too soothing, and he wonders whether she’s actually having a nice time. Maybe she’s one of those girls who really likes Secret Santa. _Great. Let’s just see how high we can raise her expectations._

“Look I have a present for you.”

Clarke stills, and she stares at him mid-thought. She recovers quickly enough. “You…you’re my Secret Santa?”

Bellamy furrows his brow and fights the urge to scratch the back of his head. “Yeah but don’t act so excited about it. You may not have noticed but I have had _other_ things on my mind, okay, the merger maybe? And, look I just couldn’t spend all my time trying to make you perfume or some crap—“

“Bellamy,” she tempers, her voice soothing once again. “It’s okay. I’m sure whatever you got me will be great.”

Bellamy sighs. “No, it won’t,” he relents, but he pulls the object from his jacket pocket anyway.

He feels nervous about how brusque his voice was a second ago. He feels nervous about letting her down. He takes a sip of whiskey while she examines the gift he’d wrapped in A4.

The music changes, and someone laughs while dancing, reminding Bellamy that this party is a light, relaxing affair and that he should relax. She really does look very pretty. Though he might still prefer her in a button down, vehemently defending her position and angrily typing internal memos only he would receive.

Clarke gasps, and Bellamy looks up at her face.

He’d spent his lunch hour finding the only art supply store in town, and, overwhelmed by options, he’d picked a few things at random. He know that they can’t be as impressive as she’s making it out to be, but his heart lifts a little thinking he hadn’t completely fucked up.

“You like it?”

She nods, and relief sags through Bellamy’s shoulders like he’s Sisyphyus and he’s finally managed to make the damn boulder stick.

“I have something for you too.”

He frowns, not understanding for a split second until he realizes that – of course – he is her Secret Santa too. A glance around the room finds Jasper and Monty turning too quickly to stare out the window, where they’re suddenly very interested in pointing out architecture and constellations to each other.

Bellamy has to put down his drink to take Clarke’s gift. It’s heavier than he thought it would be, and wrapped nicely in holiday-appropriate paper. He’s never been one of those kids who doesn’t rip right through the wrapping, and when he’s holding the paper in one crumpled fist, his smile spreads as he reads the mug that says: WORLD’S BEST CO-MANAGER.

“I figured it was about time I replaced the old one.”

Bellamy looks up at her, and they hold eye contact as they both remember how she’d smashed his old one, the one that had said _BOSS_ instead of his new title, by throwing it out his window mid-argument. Is it wrong that he’s almost nostalgic for that time now? Is it wrong that she seems to feel the same?

“Thank you,” Bellamy says, and he means it.

She offers a tight-lipped smile and nod as her response, and they both turn back toward the dancers, unconscious of how the other person’s hearts have swollen.

***

By nine-thirty the security team has come to lock up the office, and Shumway looks like none of them are going to prevent him from whatever plans he made for himself after his job is done. There are hearty groans as everyone staggers off in cars and cabs, making plans to take the party to a bar downtown. Bellamy and Clarke both politely decline, but they don’t know that they have both independently done so until they meet in the parking lot.

“Oh,” Clarke is saying. “I thought you would have – I mean, I figured that you were probably at – “

“Yeah,” Bellamy is saying back, his eyes wider than normal as if recovering from no small shock. “I thought about it – I mean – I really should be getting back – “

Bellamy and Clarke look at each other. There are just a few cars between them, but even from a distance they are pretty sure neither of them breathe.

“D’you want to go get a drink?” Clarke asks, and Bellamy releases a pent-up sigh. For a second there he thought they were going to kiss.

“You don’t have to go meet your parents or something?”

Clarke shakes her head, wisps of hair shining like golden thread. “They went home hours ago. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

Bellamy feels like an idiot. He had, noticed. He’d noticed and completely forgotten.

“Then – yeah.” She looks at him as if doubting what he said. “ _Yes_ ,” he insists, his voice a little more certain. He’s treated to the glow of her magnificent growing smile.

“Well then Bellamy,” she says, mimicking what she had told him that first day so many months ago, the day she walked into his office with hand outstretched and altered his life forever.

“I do believe this is the start of a beautiful friendship.” 


	2. DAY TWO: xmas on the Ark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas, so prepare to rot your teeth out.

The Festivus pageant took up less time than usual this year.

Bellamy watched the kids walk in a slow circle, some sort of display of unity, or something. He’s pretty sure it was all supposed to be a metaphor for togetherness, or…something…

Polite applause let him know the pageant had ended and it was time to put everyone together again. His eyes sought out the Chancellor, who was the only reason he was there in uniform, and maybe the only reason he was there at all.

“Thank you,” Clarke said, all eyes naturally turned in her direction, “for that beautiful rendition. I’m sure we will all be remembering that for the year to come.”

 _Yeah, remembering how Sawyer botched the lyrics to our international anthem_. Bellamy smirked, deciding he would have to rib Wick about that later. For the moment, Raven and her husband looked far too pleased with their kid to care.

“I know that this year has been a long one for many of us, and times have been hard. With the end of the year comes natural reflection, and I want to caution anyone who would see to resist that temptation. Our past has shaped us. It has shaped who we are, and who we are together.”

She looked at the children, who were scurrying to find their parents in the crowd. “I am so proud of what we have achieved this year, and I cannot wait to see what we will achieve together in the next.” Glasses were being passed around – all over the Ark people were dispersing them in front of monitors – and in one of their more poignant shows of unity, their Chancellor raised her glass in a quiet toast.

“To meaningful life,” she spoke, and all over the Ark people repeated the three words.

Clarke’s gaze found Bellamy’s over the crowd, and she nodded to him before she took a quick sip.

***

“That was a nice speech Princess.”

Clarke looked over her shoulder from her spot on the couch, and Bellamy closed the door behind him.

“Thank you,” she murmured, putting down the tablet that had so engrossed her attention two minutes before. It was too much to hope that she had been playing Tetris; Bellamy knew she’d likely been looking over specs, or reviewing a speech, or something.

“How was your day?” she asked. Bellamy was busy taking off his shoes and jacket, but he caught the way she pinched the bridge of her nose. She was tired. Maybe some other night he would have been disappointed, but tonight…well, he’d taken what she’d said to heart, and that meant something.

“It was fine. Octavia says thank you for the gift.”

Clarke nodded, blinking to clear the fog that was muddling her mind. His shift had gone over. “She sent over something for the baby,” she said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of their bedroom. “Clothes, I think. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

Dressed in his black military-issued shirt and cargo pants, Bellamy moved the rest of the way into the room and took the remaining seat on the couch. Clarke leaned her head on his shoulder, and Bellamy knew she closed her eyes. Her belly was a gentle swell under her dark sweater.

“I got you something.”

Clarke lifted her head off his shoulder, and turned to look at him. Her protest was already written across her face, but Bellamy smiled in the face of it.

“It’s not a lot, really. To be honest I didn’t even spend any money on it. Found it while patrolling Meca with the new recruits.”

Clarke’s expression softened somewhat, and then she looked remorseful. “I didn’t get you anything.”

Bellamy’s grin stretched. “It’s okay,” he whispered, putting his hand into his pocket and pulling out his gift. He turned his fist over and unfurled his fingers, showing her a very small silver disc, about the size of the head of a pin. Clarke’s jaw sagged, and her brows sloped. She recognized it immediately.

“Oh Bellamy,” she murmured. “Thank you.” Her fingers went to the watch on her wrist, and she unbuckled it. The face had been stuck in time for more than a year, but she still wore it every day. He’d been telling her for a year that he would get her a new one, and for a year she’d told him no with a frown. They put their heads together while her nimble fingers put the new battery in place, and she adjusted the time. “Well,” she said, when they were close enough. “I’ll figure out what minute it is later.”

“I know it’s time for bed,” Bellamy supplied. “Merry Christmas,” he added, because he’d been thinking it all day. Clarke’s expression softened instantly.

“Merry Christmas,” she echoed, and she put her hand on his cheek and kissed him.


	3. DAY THREE: mistletoe mishap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christmas is here, so prepare for mistakes.

Clarke knew they’d been on the ground for too long when Jasper was the first one to cause a GI-related outbreak.

For the first week of December most of the camp spent time finding inventive ways of relieving their bowels, and the first real problem of their settlement was solved: how to keep the smell _downwind_.

***

Clarke and Bellamy had been out of the camp for the day, making a quick journey to the Grounders’ village for a diplomatic update.

“Clarke,” Harper was saying, when the leaders walked in through open gates. “I don’t feel so good.”

She promptly vomited all over Clarke’s shoes.

***

“It’s some sort of toxin that’s all I can figure out,” Clarke was shouting over her shoulder. She was stuck in the dropship with the sick, and Bellamy was standing right outside the door trying not to be sick by proximity.

“Yeah but where did it come from?” he asked, and they both ignored the sounds of fluid hitting a metal floor. She turned away from her current patient and started walking toward him.

“Honestly Bellamy, right now I just don’t care. I just hope it doesn’t get any worse. And if Lincoln knows of anything that would keep these people from throwing up I would really appreciate it.”

Bellamy pressed his lips together and looked her over. “And you’re not sick yet?”

“I’m trying not to be. Although – honestly? – my gag reflex _has_ been tested today.”

Bellamy smirked.

“I really don’t think it’s airborne. Usually when you see a mass outbreak like this, it’s – it’s usually from something everybody ate. Bellamy it’s really time we started getting serious about hygiene.”

“I already went around asking people if they were being stupid,” Bellamy said. “Miller says everyone’s being careful.”

“Well has anyone been cooking with anything new?” Clarke whined. She held the back of her hand to her nose and tried not to wince as a wave of stench came from behind.

Bellamy took an unconscious step back, looking like he was trying really hard not to run away.

“I’ll check,” he answered, and he turned so fast Clarke doubted whether he would ever be back at all.

 _Being the camp doctor_ , she thought, taking a mental sigh. _Making it look good._

***

To his credit, Bellamy did show up a few hours later. He was holding a green branch with leaves and berries on it.

“Does this look familiar to you?”

Clarke was just hoping there wasn’t bodily fluid on her clothes somewhere. She’d washed her hands at least twenty times since she’d seen him last, and four others had been admitted to her makeshift hospital ward. They’d also sanctioned off the area behind the dropship as _pooptown_ – you can always come to visit but you won’t want to stay.

She squinted at the leaves.

“Oh my God.”

Bellamy looked at the branch as if it would suddenly mean something to him. His lower lip jutted out in confusion and he looked back to Clarke for clarity.

“It’s mistletoe,” she explained, feeling like an idiot and feeling her very last nerve tested. “Wonderful. We live in an area where mistletoe grows.”

“Mistletoe?” Bellamy asked. “As in…”

“As in the stuff that’s going to kill us all,” she snapped, and she turned back inside the ship to take inventory of their buckets. From behind her, Bellamy tossed the branch after her, as if touching it alone would make him hurl.

***

“So you’re saying this stuff is poisonous?”

Clarke fought the urge to scream the next word: “ _Yes._ ”

Jasper looked like he was really going to verify this information with Monty. He squinted through the haze of feeling very ill and very empty. “Even if we put it…in tea?”

Clarke pinched her lips together.

“What about if we smoked it.”

“Even if you smoke it,” she confirmed. “You know what, _especially_ if you smoke it.”

Jasper’s expression relaxed like he’d just understood her joke and it was a joke on him. “Yeah but is it the good kind of poisonous or the bad kind of poisonous.”

The crease between Clarke’s eyebrows crinkled into a field of fighting ticks.

“The kind of poisonous that _kills you. Slowly. By bloody diarrhea_.”

Okay, the middle part may or may not be true, but at least Clarke knew that the stuff was really freaking bad for you. The last thing she needed was everyone thinking that this new berry, or its accompanying pretty leaves, were in any way festive, nostalgia for the end of December or not.

Jasper looked like he finally believed her, or that he would not be getting a puppy for Christmas. It was hard to tell.

Clarke rolled her eyes and turned, preparing to tell Dax for the eighth time that he had to shit out the back just like everyone else.

***

The sun had set by the time Clarke felt comfortable leaving her wards. They’d identified the source of the outbreak as all of the above: Jasper had experimented with this new plant by steeping it in water, drying it into flakes, and getting some of his dumber friends to try the berries just for fun. About twenty-two people had gone along with it in search of Jasper’s new “high.”

Monty had never felt more embarrassed just to be his best friend’s best friend, and he punished himself for being on the trek with Bellamy and Clarke by digging the new latrines.

“It was going to be my Christmas present,” Monty lamented, grimacing, his manmade shovel crooked under one elbow.

Clarke smirked and walked past him. After a change of clothes and an impromptu shower by herself with a sterile bucket of water, she finally felt relatively clean. It would be short-lived, but she thought it was important to get fresh air every few hours.

Bellamy was sitting beside the fire, long stick in one hand, gaze stuck inside the flames. Night was coming on fast, but it was still that twilight hour before torches and heavy cloaks were needed.

“I may never trust anything this camp produces again.”

Bellamy turned at the sound of her voice. He grinned when he recognized her.

“All in the name of progress,” he saluted, watching as she took the seat next to him. She looked over his lap at a pile of something sitting outside his hip.

“What’s that?” she asked, interested.

Bellamy picked up a piece and held it out for her inspection. “Jasper’s stash,” he grinned, and Clarke’s smile dropped. “Don’t worry, I think we got the last of it.”

Clarke hummed her approval and turned back toward the fire. Her legs stretched out in front of her like Bellamy’s, crooked at the knee to make a sort of triangle. Their backs rested on a fallen log, their rears rested on the ground.

“Wasn’t this stuff supposed to mean something?”

Clarke turned to look at him, and found Bellamy examining the twig like it had been confusing him all day. Clarke licked her lips unconsciously, and gestured toward it.

“It was an old Christmas tradition,” she explained. “Back before the Ark people used to hide this in their houses. You know, if you got stuck under it with someone you liked, you were supposed to…”

Clarke’s shoulders sagged, because she’d had a long day.

“You were supposed to what?”

She looked him in the eye. “You were supposed to kiss.”

Bellamy’s eyebrows raised, and he shifted his gaze to the branch. “From what I’ve seen today, I don’t think there is anything else on this planet which would make me want to kiss somebody less.”

Clarke snorted.

“I agree,” she sighed.

They spent a few moments sitting together. Bellamy fed another branch of mistletoe to the fire, and they both ignored the tightening feeling in their belly. It wasn’t a sickness growing inside of them…it was nerves. It was nerves from what was left unspoken.

That was the effect of mistletoe: it didn’t really act on emotions you didn’t already have. Just like a catalyst couldn’t effect something inert, so was mistletoe incapable of making two people who didn’t want to kiss…kiss.

The problem with that was, that both Clarke and Bellamy were suddenly drastically aware of how close they were sitting to each other. They were suddenly incredibly noticeable of the gentle glow of fire against each other’s skin, and every gentle twitch of movement was interpreted as a movement toward the other.

Eventually, the damn had to break.

“Well,” Bellamy said, and Clarke turned to look at him too quickly. “Well, maybe, for science…”

She knew exactly what he was saying. “We should test it?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy said, holding the mistletoe in his hand with tightening fingers. “You know, for progress.”

Clarke swallowed against a suddenly dry throat.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Maybe…maybe we should do that.”

Bellamy glanced at the branch, and he raised it above their head, only hesitating twice on the way up. Clarke wet her lips again, trying not to question what they were doing. She stared into Bellamy’s eyes, and then followed his gaze when he glanced up to make sure the twig was in place. He looked back into her eyes, and she saw his adam’s apple bob in his throat.

Clarke felt herself lean toward him like something stuck in his gravitational pull. She closed her eyes after he did, and when their lips finally came together – short, shallow, and soft – she tried to remember to breathe.

They broke apart after either too short or too long a time; it was hard to tell what the appropriate amount of time to kiss someone was after so little practice as of late. Clarke glanced up at the mistletoe as she leaned back, and caught Bellamy putting it down.

“Yeah maybe we should keep it around,” he said.

“With enough education I think that people could figure out not to eat it,” she agreed.

They were silent for a breath, and their gazes clashed together.

They both recognized that they would probably kiss again if one of them didn’t do something about it.

“I’ve got to,” Clarke started to stay, standing quickly. “I’ve got to go check on the dropship.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy was saying, standing as well. “I should probably go make sure we cleaned under Jasper’s bed, or something.”

They both looked into each other’s eyes again. Again they would have kissed if the other had initiated it.

They both turned one hundred eighty degrees and started walking away from each other as if repelled by a magnet.

And then like a magnet, seven steps away they felt the pull, turned another one hundred eighty degrees, and kissed again.


	4. DAY FOUR: learning to skate/toboggan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Christmas, so prepare to act like a fool.

“ _Who made this._ ”

Clarke is looking around the camp, trying with all her might not to drop the sled. It is damn heavy, and she has a point to make.

The camp is either being incredibly reticent, or she is actually coming across as scary. On second thought: Bellamy stands right behind her wielding a gun, and he probably helps.

“I’m not mad,” she starts to say, hearing generations of voices in her head. “I’m just disappointed.”

“ _I’m mad!_ ” Murphy shouts from inside the dropship.

Clarke juts out her jaw. “Murphy’s mad because he has a broken arm,” she explains. “And why does he have a broken arm?” She shakes the sled for good measure, as if there is still someone in camp who hasn’t heard the story so far. “Not only is this a waste of precious resources, but it could have seriously hurt someone.”

“ _I would like to consider myself seriously hurt!”_

Clarke turns and looks at Bellamy, running a gesture over her throat. Bellamy ducks inside the dropship, there are a few exchanged words, an “ _Ow! Hey!_ ” and then Bellamy resurfaces with the flask Clarke had given her patient for his pain.

“If no one is going to come forward then we are going to have a problem,” Clarke told the group, feeling like she had really missed her career as a kindergarten teacher. “Look, if no one’s going to come forward—“

“Okay, I did it!”

The crowd parts, and Clarke cranes her neck to see around everyone. A short kid with glasses stands at the back. When he recognizes all the attention is on him, his shoulders hike up to his ears. “Hasn’t anyone ever seen _It’s a Wonderful Life?_ ”

***

Clarke, Bellamy, Raven and the new kid all go back to the dropship. Murphy dozes obliviously in the hammock, drool pooling in the corner of his mouth.

“What’s your name, kid,” Bellamy grunts.

“Tobias,” he answers, his voice like a child’s.

Bellamy looks like he hasn't heard of that name before. “Tobias?”

“Tobias **sir** _._ ”

Bellamy looks at Clarke as if to ask her to take this kid off his hands.

“Tobias,” Clarke starts, waving Bellamy off. He’d had a trying day, mostly to do with holding down a very pissy John Murphy while a very frustrated Clarke tried to bandage his broken arm. “Why did you do this?”

The sled lay halfway between their small group and the door. That’s how far she’d been willing to carry the thing.

“And where did you get this **stuff** , _Tobias?_ ” Raven asks. The kid had somehow curved a piece of sheet metal into something resembling a shepherd’s crook, and it is almost as big as he is. Raven had been keeping that metal for a special occasion.

Tobias pushes his glasses up his nose. “I found it.”

Raven makes a noise to express how disgusted she is with youth. Clarke tries to ignore her. “Tobias, what you did was very dangerous, and very bad. I’m sure if Murphy was awake right now he’d tell you the same.”

“Yeah he’d tell you he was going to shove a tree up your—“

“Raven!” Clarke’s voice snaps like a ruler on a desk. “Enough. Tobias, why did you do this?”

The boy shrugs. “I dunno. I saw it in a movie once. It looked fun.”

Clarke frowns at him. “Would you care to explain to me why you called it Rosebud?”

***

Try as they might to prevent it, Tobias’s invention takes off. The very next day Bellamy confiscates two more versions of the kid’s sled. A few days later someone figures out how to convert the old dropship seats, and then there are no fewer than twenty of these inventions in existence.

Clarke is getting sick of caring for the wounded. The eighteenth time someone comes to her complaining of a wrist injury or a concussion she almost tells them to deal with it on their own.

***

The day someone openly disobeys her – takes a Tob-oggan, as they’re starting to call them, even though Tobias has been on clean-up duty since he outed himself nine days before – is the day Clarke almost decides to introduce the stocks.

“Clarke,” Bellamy cautions, when she’s glaring at Harper as if _daring_ her to walk away from the pile of contraband with the sled in her hands. “We need to talk about this.”

She shifts her glare to Bellamy. Sensing her exit, Harper sprints out the camp with her prize.

“Bellamy, these things are _dangerous_.”

“Yes.” Bellamy agrees. “They are. They are also fun.”

Clarke doesn’t understand all at once.

Her expression shifts from anger, to comprehension, to denial, and then back to anger. “ _Bellamy._ ” She says his name and it sums up all of that. Also betrayal.

***

“I don’t want to do this I don’t want to do this,” Clarke is repeating like a mantra. They’re standing on a nearby hill, and not only was it a twenty-minute hike to get there, but it was another ten minute hard slug up the mountain, despite the excited cheers of the fellow campers.

Everything looks a lot higher up from the top, and Bellamy looks far too excited for his own good.

“Just you wait Clarke, it’s going to be amazing.”

She widens her eyes at him. “How many times have you done this before?”

He laughs. “Enough. Just you wait.”

Her Tob-oggan isn’t quite recognizable as something from the dropship anymore.

“It doesn’t even have seatbelts?”

“It doesn’t need them, look.” Bellamy puts their sled down on the snow-covered hill and tests it to make sure it won’t slide away. Then he puts Clarke into the sled, tucking her feet underneath the curved lip at the end. He passes her the reigns (really just a loop of string threaded through some holes at the front), and takes the seat behind her.

Clarke fights with uncomfortable thoughts. _Well this is certainly…intimate._

Before she has a chance to think anything more eloquent, there is a jarring movement behind her – because Bellamy pushes off.

Clarke is fighting not to scream instead.

***

“Bellamy you almost hit a _tree!_ ” She’s hitting him as if to exemplify the impact.

He’s trying hard not to laugh at how much it doesn’t hurt, or maybe he’s still giddy from the ride down the hill. “Yeah, but I didn’t!” She kicks some snow at him.

***

“The problem with the first prototype is that metal is not only heavy, but very slippery.”

“I believe the scientific term is _frictionless_.”

“I _know_ what the scientific term is,” Jasper whines, pulling a face. Monty rolls his eyes.

“When what you’re riding on is heavier than you are, _it_ controls the velocity. Our second wave of models used wood, because of _It’s a Wonderful Life_.”

“Gotta figure out this movie,” Clarke grumbles under her breath.

“Those…did not work out so well,” Monty reflects.

“Which reminds me,” Jasper says, hand moving to his backside. “I have a _pretty_ big splinter I’ve been wanting to show you for a few days.”

“But the third wave!” Monty interrupts, drawing Clarke’s attention. “The third wave we used plastic, and it is _awesome_.”

“So awesome,” Jasper agrees.

***

Clarke cuts her gaze to the right, and finds Bellamy grinning back at her. It might be a handsome grin if he weren’t taunting her at the same time.

_Oh,_ she thinks. _Game **on**_.

“Okay!” Jasper is shouting from behind them. “You know the rules! No hitting. No eye gouging. And first one to the flag is the winner.”

“Just let us go already, Jasper!” Bellamy shouts.

“Okay okay okay!” he relents, skipping to a spot between them. Clarke shakes her head slowly at Bellamy, as if to say: _not today, little boy._ Bellamy’s brows furrow over his eyes as if to say: _bring it on, little girl._

“On your mark…get set…go!”

Clarke starts running toward the edge of the hill, hands on her sled. She drops it and hops inside just in the nick of time; her hands on the reins, she visualizes the target as the wind races through her ears. There is a blur to her right, and Clarke gives in – she looks over and sees Bellamy _head first in his own sled, barreling down the mountain like a damn avalanche._ Her jaw drops, and she turns back toward the prize, leaning forward as if it’ll make her tob-oggan go any faster than it is already.

Bellamy is being reckless and stupid and damn if he isn’t going a mile a minute – he juts out in front of her and cuts her off, and just as she’s about to shout something obscene his sled flips – a natural hazard of the game – and Bellamy is lost in a spray of white powder.

A more reserved Clarke might have stopped to see whether he was okay. The first time they’d taken a spill she’d been all about it.

Now, though…Clarke grins like a damn mouse and kicks her leg out to avoid his splatter, and she doesn’t hear his complaining shouts until she’s got her feet on the proverbial breaks and is hopping out of her sled, marching through the snow at a run to get to the red flag in time.

She thinks she can hear Bellamy in the distance, shouting. Maybe she can, but she’s engrossed in her target, and she’s just visualizing her hands closing around it when something knocks roughly into her side.

Limbs go flailing as she tips into the snow, and she scrambles against whatever blob is attacking her when she realizes it’s Bellamy. Her eyes go wide – his crinkle at the corners – and she thrashes against him, trying to squirm her body from out of his grip and under his weight to inch closer to the flag. He pushes off of her because he has the leverage, and he lunges for the flag, and Clarke climbs on top of him so she can reach over his head for it instead.

Up on the hill, excited cheers and boisterous laughter are starting to turn into worried glances.

“Hey,” Jasper shouts down at them. “Guys – it’s just a flag!” He’s ignored. “Guys!”

“Should we do something?” Harper asks.

Jasper winces as Bellamy gets a face full of snow. “Nah, they’re…they’re probably alright.”

***

Clarke has taken to wearing the scrap of red fabric around her wrist. Bellamy insists his piece is bigger, and he keeps it tied around his head to prove it. Or maybe just to make Clarke mad.

No one in camp will ask either about it, anymore, or risk being dragged back to the other to hear another rendition of _Whose Bit is Bigger_. Clarke’s black eye heals eventually. Bellamy more or less gets full use of his hand back after awhile.

The most important thing is that most days, Tobias is allowed to take his toboggan out of the camp, travel to the hill twenty minutes away, and sled.


	5. DAY FIVE: first snowfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Christmas, so remember to complain about the weather.

Bellamy and Clarke were so alike they sometimes took turns being responsible.

“It’s getting cold,” Bellamy observed, doing a patrol check with Clarke one early morning. Clarke’s cheeks were pink.

“It’s nice though,” she argued, her voice holding just the hint of whimsy. It was enough to make Bellamy stop and look at her. “I’m just saying, it’s a nice kind of cold.”

Bellamy didn’t really understand what she was getting at. “There is no such thing as a nice kind of cold. There is just the kind that will kill you from exposure.”

Clarke frowned, her lips pursed. “I know that,” she said. “All I’m trying to say is that…it’s nice, you know, how… _crisp_ the air smells.”

Bellamy raised an eyebrow at her. “ _Crisp?_ ”

“You know,” she floundered, feeling embarrassed. “Fresh.”

He looked her over, not immediately addressing the way her cheeks were turning ever pinker. “Whatever.”

They kept walking. Unbeknownst to the other, their thoughts were the same: gosh we are going to die in this beautiful place.

***

When people started fighting over blankets, and everyone woke up with a red nose and blue lips, Clarke and Bellamy knew it was time to get serious. Maintaining warmth became everyone’s priority. Results were mixed: filling your parka with pine needles didn’t really seem to help, but using scraps of unused cloth to wrap your hands and feet kept blood circulating to your extremities. Eventually Octavia and a few others started turning their orange fleece blankets into jackets, hats and scarves, and people stopped complaining so bitterly about their imminent death.

***

Clarke needed to go to the Art Supply Store. She was sure there was something useful in there, and the weather was getting so cold and dreary she needed something to look forward to and something to do.

“You can’t go out on your own.”

She knew he was right, but again: their similar thinking patterns forced one of them to play devil’s advocate by default.

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Clarke tucked her hands across her torso, warming her fingers under her upper arms. “Well I’m going now.”

Bellamy shared a look with Miller, who quickly rolled his eyes. Clarke resisted the urge to say something snide.

***

“We should be okay, unless the weather gets any colder,” Clarke said over her shoulder. Bellamy was following dutifully behind, their trail so well-traveled they didn’t need to question their direction. “Although we’re going to need help. Our shelters are rudimentary at best, Bellamy, we really should consider reaching out to the Grounders again.”

Bellamy murmured his agreement. A thick cloud cover hung low over the trees, acting as a sort of insulation for the afternoon. All the same, talking about the weather was tedious, and relevance had its limit.

They found the bunker easily enough. Clarke and Bellamy snooped around for awhile, finding some lighter fluid that had been missed in trips past. Clarke also found herself a new red knit hat; it smelled awful, but she thought maybe after a good few rinses it would be alright.

***

Clarke was waiting for Bellamy to close the hatch when it happened.

Something fell onto her head, and then onto her face. She spluttered, thinking it was some sort of tree or animal dropping. Too light to be either, she cast her gaze to the sky, and her eyes went round.

It was snow.

“Holy shit,” she gasped.

Bellamy turned toward her sharply, but he saw what she did, and his gaze similarly widened. “Oh my God.”

Of course they both knew snow was a real possibility. Given their geographical location it was essentially inevitable. It still came as a shock though: white, tissue-like flakes falling from the sky so silently.

“I can’t believe it,” Clarke said, unintelligently. Bellamy seemed to feel the same. He held out a hand, watching as a snowflake fell onto his finger.

“We should probably get back,” Bellamy said, and Clarke silently agreed. She could only imagine what mayhem was breaking out in camp at that moment. Still, she didn’t want to rush away, and it didn’t seem like Bellamy wanted to either.

She grinned at him, and his smile matched her own. It was so, so beautiful. How many times had they heard of White Christmases and powder from the sky.  They'd seen pictures of skiers and snow-capped mountains, never realizing as children that there would come a day when they could see it for themselves.

"Is it wrong that I want to spin like a little girl right now?" Clarke asked.

"Is it wrong that I want to catch one of these on my tongue?" he asked in return.

Clarke looked into his eyes, feeling downright juvenile. 

"No," she answered him. 

"No," he answered her. 

It was a very self-indulgent few minutes.

***

Bellamy and Clarke didn’t quite meet up again later that night. Just like they'd feared, the camp had been mid-anarchistic bonanza when they'd returned. It was almost like the early days, except way more slippery.

***

Work was suspended as everyone played into their dorkier snow-related fantasies. Octavia worked on crafting the world’s tiniest snowman (the snow was barely more than a centimeter deep all told by mid-afternoon), while Jasper and Monty tried to create the perfect Earth snowball. Snowmen were since abandoned in favor of a pretty sad snowball fight, which was heralded as the First Official Snowball Fight on Earth After Skyflight (fosfeas for short).

People finally started to go to bed a few hours after dark. It just never really got old, watching the snowflakes fall from the sky. If you ran around enough you could even keep warm.

Clarke approached Bellamy while he was on the wall. He’d volunteered for watch duty, even after a day of no sleep. Everyone else was having too much fun.

She thought about what she wanted to say to him (there was nothing), and in reality, she just wanted to talk to him because they’d had a nice time out by the hatch. She wasn’t at all surprised to see Bellamy smiling softly up at the sky, still enraptured with the gentle snowfall.

“People are going to be pretty cold tonight.”

He looked over at the sound of her voice, and Clarke smiled nonthreateningly to let him know this was a social visit.

Bellamy shrugged a little as if to say _they’ll figure it out._

Clarke took the seat next to Bellamy on the crudely-erected bench made for overnight shifts. With only the dimming firelight in the air, there was no light pollution to cloud the scenery. The sky was indigo, the snow a soft gleaming blanket on the ground.

“I brought you this,” she finally said, offering him the blanket she carried. Bellamy nodded his thanks and took it from her, and then when he noticed she wasn’t taking off right away and that she hadn’t bought a blanket for herself, he draped it over both their laps.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling.

They sat in companionable silence. “It’s just so surreal,” he admitted. “I honestly just can’t look away.”

“I know,” she agreed.

Clarke and Bellamy smiled contentedly at the forest. Everything was quiet, and at peace.

“Did you get to do everything you wanted to do?” Clarke found herself asking. When she saw Bellamy’s head turning toward her in askance, she explained: “In the snow. You know, we did the twirling and the snow angels and the snowball fighting…I was just wondering if there was anything else you ever had _saudade_ about.”

“ _Saudade_ ,” Bellamy repeated, sounding grudgingly impressed. “To be nostalgic for something you’ve never experienced.” He looked her over, a grin poking through his cheeks. “Well - nah, forget about it.”

She knew instantly there was something he wasn’t telling her. “No, what!” she needled, feeling gamely.

Bellamy turned his head and looked at her square in the face. They were both grinning like teenagers. “Okay,” he finally admitted. “I always thought – well, I think I saw it in a movie once, or maybe in _every one_ of those old black and white Christmas movies. It’s just, there’s always – there’s always a kiss when it snows.”

The oddest thing about being so similar: neither was embarrassed by Bellamy’s revelation. Clarke’s smile closed over her teeth and deepened, and she knew her answer already.

“Well,” she said, tilting her shoulders toward him. “Go on then.”

Bellamy twisted to face her, his smile soft and relaxed. Clarke looked into his eyes as Bellamy slid his fingers under her jaw, tipped her face up gently, and kissed her.

Their lips were warm and pleasant, and snowflakes fell on their closed eyelids, fallen eyelashes, and the back of Bellamy’s neck. They seemed to kiss for a long time.

Bellamy pulled away, silent thanks radiating in the depths of his eyes. Their cheeks flushed and pink, their smiles honest and quiet, they both turned back toward the scenery, and under the blanket, she held his hand.


	6. DAY SIX: naughty or nice au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas, so prepare to try your hardest.

Their homeroom teacher was running late, and the entire class was bored with it already. Most people had taken to chatting or using their phones, but Clarke was content to doodle in the margins of her notebook until Jasper decided to ring in the spirit of the coming holiday by playing Santa.

“Clarke Griffin!” Jasper announced. He handed her a piece of paper with her name on it. “Naughty.”

Her mouth opened before she could stop it. “Naughty?” she echoed, feeling the protest rise in her throat.

“I know, and not even the good kind either.” He sounded honestly a little upset about it. Clarke frowned at him. “Maybe if you were nicer to guys.”

“What so this is all some ploy to get me to go on a date with you?” she accused, ignoring the people around them.

“N-no!” he said, maybe a little too loud. He recovered like he always did. “You’re not even my _type_ , anyway.”

“Oh so we’ve sworn off females and moved right onto dolls then.”

***

“Can we hurry this up?”

Bellamy was trying not to tap his foot in front of the assistant principal. The man was a grouchy son of a bitch on a good day, and with a whole two and a half weeks left before the holiday break, today was not one of those days.

“Do you have somewhere to _be_ , Mister Blake?”

 _Yeah,_ Bellamy thought. He had about a million places to be. Work started in less than an hour, and before that he had to buy milk and something for dinner, had to get Olivia home from practice, and had to write an essay that was a week late already.

“No,” was what he said instead.

“That’s what I thought.”

Assistant Principal Kane was looking at him as if he had one glass eye and he didn’t want anyone to know it. The thought made Bellamy snigger.

“Am I amusing you?” Kane asked, hands still on the papers detailing Bellamy’s crimes. Bellamy schooled his expression immediately, eyes darting to the pen that could decide his fate. He really needed Kane to be lenient this time; he really couldn’t afford to take time off work right now.

Bellamy licked his lips, and tried to look Kane in his non-glass eye. “Look,” he said, “I can’t handle the suspense anymore. We both know you’re not going to let me off with a warning, so just – tell me my punishment.”

Kane pursed his lips, and leaned back in his chair a little bit.

“Detention, Mister Blake.” _Shit._ “And you’ll be serving it with your new tutor, Clarke Griffin.”

_Shiiiiit._

***

Clarke inhaled a shaky breath, organizing her small stack of notes for the fourteenth time. It was a ploy to avoid rechecking her watch, because she already knew her new pupil was ten minutes late. Not so much that it mattered. Tutoring kids who didn’t want to be tutored never led to a very fun afternoon, and her new ward might even top her list of _Worst Tutees Ever._

_“Seriously? Bellamy Blake.”_

_“Yes, Miss Clarke, I think it would be a real coup for your college application. I’m sure you could get an entire essay out of the job if you manage to turn his grades around.”_

She still had her doubts.

There were noises coming from the hallway.

Clarke looked up, craning her neck to see where (or rather, who) it was coming from. The voices were indistinct and multiple; she could only tell that at least the majority of them were guys. Clarke held her breath.

One voice became louder than the others. It said something about seeing them later, I’ll give you a call, something or other, and then the crowd of voices started to fade.

_Here we go…_

“Are you Clarke Griffin?”

He wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. When she saw him in a simple parka and dark cargo pants she realized she was expecting him to drive in on a Harley. He wasn’t wearing aviators and a leather jacket, and there wasn’t a packet of cigarettes rolled into his sleeve.

_I really gotta stop watching movies with dad._

Bellamy dropped his head and looked around the room. “Hello?”

“Yeah,” she answered too quickly. “Sorry, yeah, that’s…that’s me.”

Bellamy gave her a queer look and stepped inside the room. Sinclair had been generous enough to let them borrow his physics lab for just such occasion.

Clarke looked down at her notes, trying to decide where to start. Before she could, she heard the sound of a backpack hitting linoleum half a room away. She looked up to find Bellamy slouched in a faraway desk with his phone out.

“Oh,” Clarke said. “I _was_ actually expecting to tutor you.”

“Yeah well I wasn’t actually expecting to care.”

She frowned. Clarke considered her options, and then she picked up her stuff and started navigating desks. She noticed when Bellamy started flicking glances at her and sitting up a little bit straighter.

“Okay,” she sighed, putting her stuff down on a desk next to him. “Where do you want to start.”

***

“It’s really just about memorizing the formulas.” Clarke pulled out her own cheat sheet. “And once you use them enough you sort of memorize them whether you want to or not.”

Bellamy didn’t look convinced. “Oh yeah?” he asked, taking the paper out of her hands, looking it over dubiously. The formulas took up most of a page and her handwriting wasn’t exactly bubbly. “How do you get the volume of a cone?”

Clarke closed her eyes and sighed. _This_ was not an impressive talent. _This_ spoke of hours spent studying when she could have been doing something more productive. “One-third times pi times radius cubed times height.”

She opened her eyes, and Bellamy was frowning at the sheet. “ _Shit,”_ he muttered under his breath.

***

When Clarke looked up to check the time, she was surprised to see the hour was totally gone.

“Oh,” she said. “Bellamy, it’s four o’clock, we’re done.”

Their desks were pushed right next to each other, so when he looked up he almost knocked into her forehead. His surprise shifted to the clock on the wall, and he leaned back when he confirmed what she’d said.

“Right,” he agreed, sounding a little mysterious. “I should…I have to go.” Clarke’s lips flattened together while she tried to interpret the tone of his voice. She almost had the feeling he didn’t _want_ to leave.

They packed up in relative silence. Days were short this time of year, and already dusk was turning the sky outside lavender.

“Are you coming back tomorrow?”

Considering how hesitant he was when they started, she thought it was a legitimate question.

“Well it turns out all of my teachers have banded together,” Bellamy said, sounding as if he was a little amused by it all. “Looks like I won’t pass the semester if I don’t.”

Clarke already knew this, but hearing him say it was still something else. She wasn’t particularly proud to be his tutor and she wondered why. He hadn’t called her a bitch like Murphy had, and he didn’t cry every time she corrected him like Charlotte…but still. She felt almost a little sad being in the position she was in, and she wondered if it was pity. She really hoped it wasn’t.

Bellamy offered her a tight smile by the door, backpack slung over one shoulder. “See you tomorrow then, Princess.”

***

“Clarke, is something on your mind?”

Clarke looked up at her mother, realizing she’d been raking her dinner absently with her fork while lost in thought. “Hmm?” she said, before quickly shoveling a bite of something cold into her mouth. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine.”

Her mom was still staring at her, eyes probing. Something about the way her mom’s brown eyes glittered always made Clarke feel transparent. “Kane tells us that you have a new pupil.”

“Yeah,” she answered too quickly, pushing her fork around to get something else that would distract her mother.

“A real doozy of a pupil, too, if Kane explains it right.”

Clarke shrugged with one shoulder, tightening her lips offhandedly. “He’s not so bad.” She glanced at her father to figure out whether he was convinced by her flippancy, but he had also mastered the art of hidden thoughts.

“That reminds me,” Abby Griffin said, and she turned to Jake Griffin ready to tell some story about her day. Clarke sighed with the loss of attention. _A doozy?_

It was fair to say that she’d been able to think of little else other than Bellamy Blake all day. Mostly because she didn’t know a whole lot about him: he was a fifth-year senior, having something to do with mysterious circumstances involving his mom. She also knew he had a younger sister, who was a year below Clarke. Octavia was famous for being not only obscenely beautiful, but also the only sophomore allowed on the varsity lacrosse team.

She knew Bellamy was handsome and had a lot of friends, and that he had an afterschool job. She’d heard alternately that he was a mechanic, a bartender, and a drag racer. Her guess was mostly on the first option, though she hadn’t necessarily asked.

***

“This is a good essay,” she was saying. Said essay was covered in blue marks (red was simply too depressing), but after finishing her second read-through she had to admit…he’d made some really excellent points.

Bellamy was scowling in his chair. His frown had been deepening ever since she’d corrected the fifth grammatical error.

“I’m serious. All this stuff,” she insisted, gesturing to her corrections, “could have been done by a computer. What I didn’t touch was the content, Bellamy. You have some really elegant ideas in here.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Elegant?”

Clarke rolled her eyes, fighting a grin. “Yeah,” she taunted. “Elegant. You could take this paper to the prom.”

Bellamy snorted, grinning.

***

It was the end of their first week together, and they were packing up in relatively good spirits.

“So what’ve you got planned today, Clarke,” Bellamy was asking, sounding borderline boisterous. It had been a good day. “Big date tonight or what.”

Clarke tried not to _har har_. “Or what,” she answered. “More like it’s spaghetti western night at home. And yeah, that means we make spaghetti and watch a western movie. My dad is _obsessed_.” She grinned affectionately, pushing her notebooks into her bag. It took a moment to realize Bellamy had stopped cleaning up, and that he wasn’t saying anything. She looked up, and found his thoughts a million miles away.

“Sounds nice,” he said, his voice just as far.

***

Clarke and Wells were walking between classes Monday morning. Because of the nature and location of the school, there weren’t a lot of advanced placement offerings. If you were enrolled in any of them you could expect with relative safety to see the same people every hour of the day, and the only time she and Wells left each other’s company was with seventh period science: Clarke was taking physiology, and Wells had biotechnology.

“You coming to chess club today?” he asked her, hand on his backpack. Clarke nodded absently.

A voice echoed from up ahead, and it drew Clarke’s attention. She could see that just a few hundred feet down the hall, Bellamy and his friends were walking toward her and Wells, and that it was obvious they would pass right by each other on their way to their next class.

Clarke found she could barely look away. She met Bellamy’s gaze when he was in easy shouting distance, and they maintained their eye contact even as they came closer, and passed each other’s shoulder. She almost turned around just to see the back of his head.

“Hey, is it really true you’re tutoring that guy?”

Wells’ question almost went unanswered. She felt like her head was suddenly fogged through, and it took a quick shake to clear it.

“Clarke?”

***

“Clarke?”

Bellamy was looking up at her from down below; he’d dipped his head to interrupt her empty line of vision. She realized she’d zoned out with a start.

“Sorry,” she said. “What were we talking about?”

He frowned at her. “Hey if I’m being in any way an inconvenience to you…”

“You’re not,” she said too quickly. “You’re not,” she said again. “Sorry, it was a long weekend.”

Bellamy leaned back in his chair. “So you did go out. Who’s the lucky guy? Bet it’s the Jaha kid. When your dad’s the principal I bet you get all the babes.”

“No,” she frowned at him. “No, it’s not that.” Clarke looked away, considering whether she was going to tell him. It came out of her mouth almost like an accident. “No, my dad might lost his job.”

When he didn’t respond all at once, Clarke turned to look Bellamy in the eye. She didn’t know what she was expecting; probably some sort of confused _so what_ attitude. But it was almost as if a whole week of tutoring had made them friends. Bellamy’s eyes were wide as if he couldn’t believe it either.

“Shit.”

***

Bellamy met her outside physiology two days later. When she looked surprised to see him, he answered before she could ask. “Got let out early, decided not to wait by Sinclair’s room.” Clarke’s expression softened into an _Ah._

“How’s your dad?”

Clarke looked to the side as her classmates filed into the hall around her. She wondered if any of them had heard, and her expression tightened. “He’s fine,” she said, her voice set to match.

She clutched her books to her chest and started walking down the hall in the direction of the AP physics lab. When she realized her mood was still darkening a few hundred steps later, she realized she needed to say something. “Look, no one knows about that, okay?” She cut half a glance in Bellamy’s direction, observing only that he was still at her side. “Not even Wells.”

Bellamy didn’t say anything at first. “Got it?” she asked, her voice a little higher than necessary.

“Got it,” he answered, his voice grizzly and low.

When they got into the familiar classroom, Sinclair was just leaving. “Hi Clarke,” he acknowledged, brightly. “Don’t forget to lock up on your way out.” He winked, grabbed his briefcase, and was out the door.

Clarke threw herself into a seat at random and pulled out her stuff.

“Where were we,” she snapped. “Geometry? Do you know the equation for the volume of a cube yet or do you need my sheet.”

Bellamy was carefully taking the seat next to her, acting like she was a bomb it was his unfortunate job to detonate.

“I’m good.” His tone was clipped.

Clarke felt the frustration rising inside of her. It was the helpless kind that had to do with everything and nothing, and fighting it was like fighting the tide.

“Did you finish the rewrites I told you to do?” she asked, holding out her hand as if he’d give it to her. “And what about the short answers for government, did you get to those?”

Bellamy’s eyes were dark and foreboding. “Hey if you don’t want to do this anymore just say so. I don’t need this. I don’t need this shit.”

“What happened to you last year.”

The question hung in the air like a dead body.

“Why didn’t you graduate.”

Bellamy looked at her as if she were finally revealing herself to be his assassin, and she had already pulled out the knife.

She already wished she could take the questions back, but they were already there: in the space between them, large and heavy and expanding with every passing second.

“I don’t need this.”

Bellamy stood and marched to the door, but Clarke didn’t watch him leave. She held her breath until she couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore, and then she folded herself onto her desk, and cried.

***

Bellamy didn’t show up the next day. She wondered what it meant about her that Clarke did, and that she spent a lonely hour sketching in the margins of her notebook, watching the light in the room fade with the dark.

***

The next day was Friday, and the last full school day before finals’ week. Clarke dragged her feet to Sinclair’s classroom, knowing she was just setting herself up for disappointment again. Bellamy wouldn’t be there. She’d seen him across the quad at lunchtime, and he’d legitimately pretended not to see her back.

Sinclair again smiled when he said goodbye, and for the first time Clarke wondered why he smiled at her, and not at Bellamy. Was it because she was a female? Was it because she’d taken his class, or that she’d earned a top grade in it? She’s sure Bellamy at some point took his class too.

Clarke sighed and took a seat. She pulled out her notebook, flipping through the pages to see whether there were any anatomical designs she could redo. The muscles were by far her favorite; not only did they require an incredible attention to detail, but they were almost everywhere in the body: legs, arms, heart.

“Hey.”

She looked up, and felt the muscles in her body contract in a way she could never draw. Bellamy was in the doorway. Clarke was embarrassed to realize she thought about crying again, but there was something in him showing up: something hopeful. She was legitimately glad to see him.

“Hey,” she said back, and then she pushed some stuff off the seat next to her so he could take it.

He did.

***

It was almost six o’clock when they finally found a place to close, and it only maybe had something to do with the fact the janitor walked in on them.

“What are you doing with your sister tonight?” she asked.

Bellamy was pushing notebooks and textbooks into his backpack at random. “Oh, nothing special. Pretty sure she’ll want to have all her friends over, and it’ll be my job to keep everyone sober. Fun stuff.”

“Do you want to come over to my house?”

Thoughts raced through Bellamy’s mind. She could see them plainly. “It's not a date,” she felt like clarifying. “Sorry, it's just, it's just spaghetti western night. I mean, if you have something better to do I understand—“

“I don't.”

Clarke was silent for a moment, staring at him. “Okay then,” she finally said.

***

Clarke questioned her decision for the seventh time while getting out of her car in her family's driveway. She thought about texting her parents so they could prepare, but in the end she hadn't…and she doesn't know why.

Bellamy’s truck pulled up in front of her parent’s lawn. She wondered what her house looked like from the street. To her it had just always been home…Clarke wondered what Bellamy’s house looked like. Now her own house felt a little ostentatious, even for a pretty standard two story. 

Bellamy walked up the driveway, which was still wet with the midday rain. He stopped in front of her, staring at the lights on in the windows. “Nice house,” he said.

Clarke took a preparatory breath. She started walking toward her house and Bellamy fell in behind. She opened the door without questioning her own motives.

“Mom! Dad! I'm home!” She ignored the heavy smirk Bellamy sent in her direction.

“Hey Clarke!” Her dad’s voice echoed recognizably through to the foyer. “Perfect timing. Just getting done with the garlic bread.”

“Could use your help with the salad though!” her mom’s voice joined in, and Clarke would’ve rolled her eyes in other circumstances. Where her dad was all about butter slathered on white bread, her mom was extra virgin olive oil and whole organic grains. It was the engineer and the doctor in both of them, respectively.

Clarke put down her bag inside the door, and slipped off her shoes. Bellamy saw and followed suit. His socks had seen better days, and he seemed to notice.

Abby Griffin walked out to meet her daughter, a dish towel clasped between her hands. She stopped short when she saw they had a guest.

“Oh, Clarke,” she said, not wanting to be rude. “You brought company.”

“Mom, this is Bellamy Blake,” Clarke introduced, holding her ground. She noticed when her mom’s astute gaze traveled to their guest, and she recognize the name.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, the more the merrier.” She was consummately polite, and it was one of her best qualities. Clarke’s mom extended her hand. “Hi, my names Abby. Clarke told me she's been working with you after school.”

“Yes ma'am,” Bellamy answered, his voice the very picture of good grace. “She's been really helpful. You must be proud.”

There is a way to a mother’s heart, and it is in complimenting their daughter. Abby's lips twitched at the corners, and then she smiled.

***

“I like this guy,” Jake was saying, because both he and Bellamy had their fork in the last meatball, and Bellamy wasn’t about to give it up without a fight. Jake relented with an appreciative grin.

Abby agreed. “The man has good taste.” Clarke smiled and took a sip of her water. It had been a fun dinner; Bellamy was up on his football so he and her dad had something to talk about. Bellamy apparently used to play his freshman and sophomore years, but had since stopped. When asked the natural question – why – Bellamy had offered only a cagey response having to do with priorities and stuff at home.

“Just you wait for the movie,” Abby said, standing to clear the plates. “You’ve never seen such awful grandstanding on a soundstage in 1950.”

Clarke took pity on their guest. “The most important thing is to mock it heavily,” she explained, when Bellamy looked as if he were having trouble remaining politely enthusiastic. He relaxed a little bit.

Bellamy moved to stand. “Let me help you with that, Dr. Griffin.”

***

Bellamy fell asleep during the movie. Clarke wouldn’t have noticed except he fell asleep almost entirely on her shoulder.

***

“Thanks for everything, Mr. and Mrs. Griffin. I had a really wonderful time.”

“It was our pleasure,” Abby insisted.

“You come over any time,” Jake added.

Clarke ignored her parents, and decided to walk Bellamy out to his car. She knew they were either watching from the door, the window, or were doing their very best eavesdropping from halfway across the house while trying to be completely impartial.

“Your parents are really nice.”

“Yeah,” Clarke agreed. “They can be a little overbearing sometimes, but in general…I dunno. I guess I could do a lot worse.”

Bellamy’s lip curled sardonically as he looked into the distance, opening his car door and throwing his backpack into the passenger’s seat. “You most definitely could.”

Clarke examined him impassively, again wondering what his home life was like to make such a naturally smart, funny, and handsome guy go so off the rails. Her entire experience with Bellamy had been freakishly pleasant; he was an excellent listener and absorber of information, and she rarely had to teach him anything twice. After the initial few days of him asking all the utterly basic questions any new pupil of hers asks in complete embarrassment, they’d worked at an incredibly steady pace.

“So what’re your plans for this weekend?” she found herself asking.

Bellamy palmed his car keys, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat so they hung in front of his abdomen. He shrugged. “Work, study. Nothing too crazy.”

“Where do you work?”

The question didn’t seem to faze him at all. “Downtown, at Ridley’s Oil Change.”

“You change oil?” She couldn’t help the surprise in her voice. Bellamy shrugged again.

“Sometimes. Sometimes he has me stock, or fix up some of the old junkers sitting around the lot.”

“Is that what you want to do after you graduate? Fix cars?”

Bellamy looked at her carefully, almost as if gauging whether he wanted to share the information. “No,” he said simply, and when he didn’t continue all at once she realized he wasn’t going to elaborate. Clarke couldn’t think of anything else to say. She glanced at her shoes, and then back at her house, and then she realized she didn’t want to say goodbye yet, but there was no reason to keep him with her.

“I can’t date you.”

The statement hit her like a kick to the back of the head. “I don’t remember asking.”

He looked into her eyes, and she held them back steadily. His seemed to know something already. She wondered if they knew that her heart was picking up speed.

“I need to pass my classes for one.”

She nodded, agreeing. Clarke had no idea what she looked like. “And another?”

Bellamy’s head tilted an inch to the side. His full lips appeared to tighten. “You’re too nice for a guy like me.”

Memories of Jasper Jordan come back to her uninvited, of a homeroom game not two weeks before in which her classmate had claimed the exact opposite. The less than tactful teenage side of her wanted to mention that now just to be purely argumentative.

“Bellamy,” she said, her voice far more put together than she felt. “This was just dinner with my family. Purely platonic.”

Clarke couldn’t be entirely sure, but she thought she heard Bellamy’s hand tighten over his keys. “Good,” he said.

She nodded. “Good.”

***

Clarke woke up the next morning feeling uneasy. Her day was laid out so predictably before her, and while she used to enjoy the routine of productivity, something about it was bothering her today. Maybe it was the lack of sleep she’d got the night before. Her and Bellamy’s conversation had hung heavy in her mind, and it was hard to shake.

She found herself holding her cellphone, pinching her lips with indecision. Her fingers tapped a message before she could reconsider.

 _Wells and I go to the library in Mecha to study on the weekends_ , she typed. _It’s quieter there, not a lot of kids we know. You’re welcome to join if you want._

Clarke didn’t realize all at once that she was holding her breath. In fact, it took a return text from Bellamy and an expellant sigh for her brain to regain oxygen.

_What time?_

***

Wells shot another glance at Clarke. She had found them timed mostly to whenever Bellamy leaned over to ask her a question at a whisper; his effort not to bother Wells’ studying. Wells was about ninety-percent successful in convincing Bellamy he wasn’t interrupted every time.

This time, after a hushed conversation about something she and Wells had been taught their freshman year, he really let his gaze linger on Clarke’s face.

***

“Am I interrupting your studying?”

Clarke put her pen down on top of notebook, and leaned back into her chair.

“No,” she lied. Bellamy calling her at 9 o’clock at night on a Sunday had shocked her so much, she wouldn’t have been able to study even if she hadn’t answered.

“I just had a quick question,” he started. There was a commotion in the background. “ _O!_ ” he shouted, his voice sounding distant all of a sudden, like there was something between his mouth and the mouthpiece. “ _What did I tell you!_ ”

When he came back to their conversation his voice sounded stressed. “Look I can’t concentrate here. Can I just come to your house? I promise it’ll be quick.”

Again, her pulse quickened. It shouldn’t have. But the threat of having him in her house again…of having him in her room…well, it was almost terrifying.

“That’s fine,” she said.

***

Clarke opened the door before he could ring the bell, and her finger was immediately to her lips. She tilted the top of her head toward the living room, where the sounds of the evening news echoed from the television her parents were watching. Bellamy’s expression set seriously, and together they tiptoed upstairs.

They moved silently until Clarke’s bedroom door was closed behind them.

“Thanks for letting me come over,” Bellamy said immediately. “O doesn’t have a final tomorrow until the afternoon. There was no way she was going to let me study.”

Clarke waved it off. “It’s fine, I was just reviewing. What’s up?”

Bellamy was glancing around her room, and it became immediately apparent that they had a problem: there was no communal table from which to work. They could either settle on the floor…or onto Clarke’s hastily made bed.

Bellamy didn’t seem distracted in the slightest. He dropped his backpack to the ground and slid to the carpet next to it.

“It’s probably a really stupid question…” he started, and Clarke released a breath as she took the seat next to him.

***

Close to half an hour later, Clarke stepped back inside her bedroom after a quick trip to the bathroom, and found Bellamy not where she’d left him.

He was standing by her bookshelf, attention fixed on the framed photographs decorating the shelves. Clarke moved into the room until she could see what he saw. It was a picture of her and her friends from her old school.

“I didn’t know you used to go to Alpha.”

It had been a long time since she’d thought of those years of her life, and the private school across town that had once been her second home.

“Wells did too,” she found herself saying. “He left when after I was kicked out.”

Bellamy turned his head so he could openly stare at her, and she knew she’d have to explain.

“It’s a long story.”

Bellamy didn’t miss a beat. “I’m listening,” he pointed out.

Clarke frowned. She took a deep breath and released it, as if it would diminish the whole ordeal. “It basically boiled down to the fact I caught our principal diverting funds. A few of us stood together – Wells’ dad was one of them, even though he was just a teacher then. But our principal covered her tracks, and no one would believe the few’s word against the many – specifically the many members of the board of trustees’ council.”

Bellamy’s eyes were round. “That sucks.”

She smirked. “It did.” They held each other’s gaze for a beat, and then: “But Wells came with me. It wasn’t so bad after that. To this day I still picture the villains of classic literature with Principal Diana Sydney’s face.”

Bellamy almost smiled. “Oh,” he said, sounding like he was almost making a joke. “Me too.”

***

Clarke woke up on top of her covers in a room with every light blazing. She looked around blearily, confused, until she found Bellamy dozing on the carpet just below herself. She checked the clock on her bedside table; it was 3:02 in the morning.

“Bellamy,” she whispered, her voice heavy with sleep. “Bellamy you have to wake up, my parents will see your car.” Clarke tried to sit up, when she found the textbook she’d been reading propped across her belly.

“Bellamy,” she whispered again.

He jumped, his whole jerking into wakefulness.

“Clarke?” he questioned, under his breath.

She didn’t have time for formalities.

“You have to leave. My parents are going to wake up and find your car. They only just stopped telling me babies came from storks three weeks ago.”

Bellamy chuckled under his breath.

***

She couldn’t believe how cold and tired she was, walking Bellamy out to the curb for the second time (mostly to ensure he survived the journey from her room and did not encounter her vicious blood-sucking monster parents who came out only when their daughter was in perceived danger). Clarke longed for her bed and her flannel pajamas with the little pieces of chocolate cake print.

Bellamy seemed deliriously tired. He fumbled with his keys so much she thought he might wake the neighbors.

“Thanks for letting me come over,” he said again, and again Clarke nodded tightly.

She was squinting through the haze of her own fatigue and the misty darkness that accompanied early morning, when she did not observe Bellamy’s head dipping around the side of hers. One second she was contemplating whether this was the same weather in which Harry Potter encountered the Knight Bus, and in the next Bellamy’s curly hair was tickling her nose, and she felt his warm, soft lips on her cheek.

“See you tomorrow.”

His grin disappeared into the cab of his truck, and Clarke watched in suspended animation as his engine turned over, and he drove into the distance. Even when he turned the corner at the end of her block, and she finally went back inside, did she not fully believe what had happened.

Clarke eschewed the pajamas, and the book, and any other studying she would have done. Instead she turned off all the lights in her room, slunk into bed wearing only her t-shirt and underwear, and fell asleep immediately.

***

The first day of finals went by uneventfully. The prompt for her in-class English essay had been predictable, and her calculus test only covered material through November. There was a text from Bellamy waiting for her as soon as started walking toward her car.

_Are you going to Mecha today?_

_No,_ she typed back quickly. _Just going back to my house. D’you want to come over?_

His response was almost immediate.

Clarke was sure she grinned the whole way home.

***

“Hi, sweetie.”

The grin died when she walked into her kitchen.

Her mother was home. Abby’s voice was calm, but held just the hint of something more: of more emotion lurking just below the surface, as if she’d been angrier earlier, or more upset earlier. Just more.

“Mom,” Clarke started, unsure what to say. “What’re you doing home?” Abby wasn’t due until after six. A thought occurred to her. “Is it dad? Is everything okay?”

“Your dad’s fine,” she said immediately. Again there was something else going on, something that made the tiniest hairs on the back of Clarke’s neck stand on end.

“Clarke, I need to talk to you about Bellamy.”

The floor seemed to drop from under her. There was no better way to describe the total shift in how she felt against gravity. “What?” she asked, nearly breathless.

“Clarke I went to turn off the lights in your room last night,” she explained, and Clarke’s chest constricted around her heart. “And – and you can probably imagine – I don’t know maybe you can’t – but you could maybe see how I – how it could look – “

“Mom nothing happened.”

Abby looked into her daughter’s eyes as if expecting to hear just that.

“I just don’t think this is a very normal tutor-student relationship anymore, sweetheart.” The affectionate names were starting to grate on her, inexplicably. “And it was something when he was coming over for dinner without you telling us beforehand, and – and it’s another to find him _almost in your bed_ – “

“Mom,” she said again, sounding more desperate now. “ _Nothing happened_.”

“I know,” Abby answered. Her voice made her sound like she was on the verge of tears. “Or, I’m going to choose to believe that. But Clarke – you can’t tell me that it’s not becoming more than that.”

Her mind was disastrously blank.

“And I know that you’re a good girl, Clarke.”

_Jasper handed her the paper and winced. Naughty. Bellamy looked at her implacably in the dark. Too nice for a guy like me._

“And I worry – I worry about him. I worry about Bellamy.”

“Bellamy?” The name echoed from her lips before she could stop it.

“If you only _knew_ ,” Abby said under her breath. “Clarke, if you only knew what I know about that boy, I really don’t think you would be breaking our trust and sneaking him into your room at night.”

Clarke’s eyes grew impossibly larger. _What?_ “Mom – “ she said, and her thoughts ran away from her. Her parents had met the boy once – _I like this guy –_ No, wait, they’d talked about him once too – _A real doozy of a pupil too, if Kane explains it right_.

She had no idea what her mom was talking about. The fact her mom wasn’t being immediately forthcoming was frustrating, until it clicked – _oh my God_ – Abby Griffin _couldn’t_ tell her. What her mom knew, whatever it was, had something to do with the privacy shared between a doctor and their patient.

“Mom he’s not like that,” she said immediately.

“Clarke,” her mom cautioned. “I know this boy, better than you think I do. Has he told you about what happened to him last year? Has he told you anything about his past whatsoever?”

“No, but – “

“ _Clarke_ ,” she stressed. “Please. _Please_ just trust me. Please just tell me that you won’t’ let things go too far with this boy.”

Her cheek burned where he’d kissed it last night.

And because she was stubborn, or stupid, or her mother’s daughter, she said: “Mom, I trust him.”

“Please Clarke, listen to me.”

Clarke had heard enough. “No!” she shouted, knowing Bellamy was on his way over at just that moment. “Mom, I know him! And I trust him!”

“Clarke!”

Tears were rising in her throat now, the angry ones that sense impasses and anticipate hurt feelings. “Mom, you say you trust _me_ , so _trust me_.”

Her mother’s tears spilled over. “ _Clarke._ ”

***

Clarke’s thoughts were scattered with the whipping wind in her hair. She stormed out of her parents’ house exactly when Bellamy pulled up to the curb. They made eye contact through his windshield, and Bellamy’s expression immediately shifted. He reached against his seatbelt to open the passenger side door and Clarke clambered in.

“Drive,” she begged, and Bellamy didn’t need telling twice. She put on her seatbelt as he peeled away from the curb, never having shifted his truck into park.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but Clarke had her head between her hands. She was going over every interaction, every glance Bellamy and her mother had shared when he’d been over to their house on Friday night.

She tried to interpret the way he’d helped her wash the dishes, the way her mother had agreed with her dad’s assessment that Bellamy was a good guy. She tried to tell herself that she only cared about Bellamy superficially – she only felt excited for his successes because he was her student and he was a good student – and then she tried to tell herself fighting with her mother was worth it because Bellamy was worth it.

“Clarke where are we going? I don’t understand.”

“ _Pull over_.”

She had no idea where they were at that moment, but Bellamy did as she asked, guiding the car gently to the curb, shifting the truck into park, and shutting off the engine. He turned toward her – the tension in the car felt thick and electric, heavy with the anticipation of whoever would speak or act first – and Clarke unbuckled her seatbelt.

She climbed onto the bench, combed her hand into the hair at Bellamy’s temple, and kissed him.

He didn’t kiss back all at once. A part of her had been terrified he would push her away immediately, and she would be gutted. But his shock faded with time, and eventually he was kissing her back, lips pressing into hers with increasing fervor. They both stepped into this abyss together, with open lips and sucking breaths and mingled tongues. When he pulled back there were tears in her eyes, and Bellamy stared into hers unabashedly.

“Can’t say a girl has ever cried after kissing me,” he said, and Clarke laughed softly.

“It’s…it’s my mom.”

Bellamy didn’t look quite so surprised to hear her say that. His lips closed over his teeth.

“She was home when I got there.”

He leaned back in his chair, making Clarke realize he still had his seatbelt on. His hand took the place of hers, forking through the hair at his left temple while he looked out the window.

“What did she tell you?” he asked, his voice gruff and quiet.

“Not much,” Clarke whispered back. “And knowing my mom, not much is enough.”

It felt like someone was stepping on her stomach and applying increasing pressure. She waited for Bellamy to say something, to say anything, so she would have some idea of what to do.

“Well I guess it’s time to take you home,” he said, listlessly, and the pressure inside her gut twisted like an angry knife. Clarke pressed her lips together, fighting tears, and rebuckled her seatbelt. He was right, of course. Clarke couldn’t avoid the proverbial music, and she would have to face her mother again. It said a lot about Bellamy that he knew this, and would push the two of them together rather than take her down a dirty and sordid path with him.

She looked away while Bellamy turned the key in the ignition and pulled out on the street, and she kept her gaze diverted until he made a wrong turn. Bellamy struck her as the kind of person who never missed a turn.

She tried to look at his face when he made another one. “Bellamy,” she started to say, and he made brief eye contact so that she would realize: they were not going to _her_ home.

They were going to his.

Clarke’s eyes grew as she shifted her attention to the road. They made every turn the horse in _Beauty & the Beast_ would’ve been too scared to make on his own.

She found herself on a street she’d never been on before. The trees were sparse and bare here, and litter punctuated the the gutters instead of multi-colored leaves. The houses hadn’t been painted probably since they were cheaply erected; each one looked like it came from the same boxy blueprint, with random attachments placed over the years. One faded blue house had a plastic awning over the stoop, another had applied decorative and defunct shutters to the front-facing windows. Fences were made with chain-link metal.

Bellamy pulled up to one on the end, its sideboard tan and fading. The gutters around the roof overflowed, and the grass was patchy and dead. A car sat on cinderblocks around the side of the house, she was guessing to mark the edge of the property.

“Home sweet home,” he muttered. Clarke didn’t trust herself to say anything, so she remained silent as Bellamy opened his car door and ambled toward the house. She followed.

He used a key to unlock the deadbolt on the door, and then he held the door open for her so she could pass inside.

She’d never appreciated how clean her house was until she saw the state of Bellamy’s. There were piles of stuff – just indiscernible stuff – everywhere. It didn’t look like anyone who lived there was a hoarder, per se, but more like they just lacked…tables, and drawers, and that the people who lived there couldn’t tell what was important to keep or not.

“So this used to be me and Octavia’s room,” Bellamy said, standing in the living room. She could tell it was the living room only because of the heavily holed couch. “We’d string a curtain here for when my mom had guests. She was…” He looked like he’d been preparing to say this for awhile. “She was a prostitute, so she had guests over a lot.”

Clarke didn’t trust herself to speak.

Bellamy put down his back pack. He moved to the left and flicked on a light. Fluorescent bulbs overhead illuminated the kitchen, which was a grimy collection of yellow tiles and peeling wallpaper. Cupboards tilted precariously on their hinges, and the sink was full of unwashed dishes.

“I would offer you something from the fridge,” Bellamy said, his voice gently sardonic, “but I’m the one who does the shopping. When Octavia’s not available to help you can expect milk and a loaf of bread. Might be some ketchup, but I probably wouldn’t eat it if I were you.”

Clarke felt like Bellamy was making a joke for her expense, and she wished she was capable of laughing at it, for his sake. As it was she could offer a small smile, and let him continue. “Oh!” he said, flipping open cabinets. “Crackers.” He picked up the box, and they both could immediately tell it was empty. Bellamy frowned and put it back into the cupboard. “Well let’s finish up the tour.”

Clarke followed Bellamy down a short hallway. “That’s where Octavia sleeps now,” he explained, gesturing through a half-open door. “It used to be filled with just crap, I dunno I never really looked.” Through the gap she could see more cracked paint, posters hung everywhere. “Through there’s the bathroom,” he didn’t stop to show her what a bathroom looked like and Clarke didn’t want to peek. He opened a third door, which exposed the end of the tour. Bellamy stood in the doorway, and waited until Clarke was at his elbow. His shoulders were slumped now, as if thinking about something he tried not to every day.

“And this is where I shot the man who killed my mom.”

The blood in Clarke’s veins seemed to congeal, and she felt as if she moved in slow motion because it was no longer circulating properly.

“You…Bellamy…”

He frowned, not looking at her. “It was hard to hide what she was doing once we became teenagers, so she did her business while we were at school. I heard screaming when I came home early one day. Octavia was still at school, but I’d picked a fight and Kane sent me home early. But I heard the screaming, and I knew…I just knew what to do. We kept the gun in the kitchen, so I – I just went and got it. And I…I opened this door, and…and she was dead…so I shot him.”

“You shot who?”

“His name is Grus. I didn’t even kill him, Clarke. He’s serving life in Allenwood.”

“I…I had no idea.”

Bellamy shrugged. “Yeah, you might be one of the only ones who doesn’t. I was eighteen when it happened, so no one kept my name out of the police reports. My mom didn’t really make the news, but this block is kinda small. People know. People at school know.”

_My mom knows._

“They wanted to kick Octavia into the foster system, because she’s still underage. We get to stay together if I can stay in school, graduate, and keep my job.”

It suddenly made her extracurriculars - chess club, art club, tutoring kids afterschool – look woefully unimportant.

“So that’s how my mom knows you then? From what happened with your mom?”

He nodded, not looking at her. “That, and…” He sighed. “Last year was a really dark year for me, Clarke. I did a lot of crap I’m not proud of, and it almost cost me everything.” He looked over at her, his dark eyes calculating, his lips firm. “It also made me realize what was important in life. It’s protecting the people I care about.”

Clarke swallowed against a very sticky throat.

***

They drove back to Clarke’s house, because there was nothing else to do at Bellamy’s house. They both had final exams the next day, and plans to run away together weren’t seriously considered. She felt too ashamed to hear him actually express out loud how important it was to be nice to your mother.

She sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at her parent’s house. Her thoughts swirled like a gathering storm, and she didn’t know where to start. Bellamy’s past, and the kiss they’d shared pervaded most thoughts, but in gathering ideas: she couldn’t imagine the horror of discovering your murdered mother. She couldn’t imagine supporting a family at eighteen-years-old. She couldn’t imagine the embarrassment of having to walk the halls every day knowing that you should have finished already, and having to stomach what people could think of you.

She was in awe of Bellamy’s strength, and it was this hazy impression that let her know with absolute certainty that it was time to go inside.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t come in with me?”

Bellamy shook his head. He grinned crookedly, and he was so youthful and handsome. “I have to study, remember?”

***

Wednesday, and the end of final’s week, came in a blur of chewed pen caps, chipped fingernail polish, and her chocolate cake pajamas. Bellamy had a few questions that were covered through text messages or late-night phone calls.

Bellamy and Octavia came over for dinner Wednesday night to celebrate both the end of the semester and Christmas Eve’s Eve.

“So,” Octavia asked the table, chewing on a piece of bread. “Have you all been naughty or nice this year?”

***

Having dropped Octavia off at a friend’s, Bellamy and Clarke were driving around aimlessly under the guise of ‘taking the long way home.’

Bellamy pulled to a stop in some nondescript residential neighborhood. They were hidden in the shadow between houses, and the cab was shrouded in relative darkness.

He unbuckled his seatbelt and hooked an arm over her shoulders. Clarke unbuckled her own seatbelt and tried to get comfortable.

“So, Clarke Griffin, you refused to answer Octavia earlier. Have you been naughty or nice this year?”

There was a subtly challenge in his voice. Maybe pride. She smirked up at him. “You tell me.”

“Well,” he pretended to consider his options. “I mean, you are in a car with a juvenile delinquent.”

She didn’t indulge him, and he grinned at her sideways.

“But then again…you are in a car with a juvenile delinquent.”

Clarke turned to face him entirely. She’d kissed him in this truck once already, and it was high time she did it again.

She hooked her leg over both of his and straddled his lap. Bellamy grinned up at her, enjoying the view, so she put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. They kissed until he had a flat hand on her back, until that hand was under her shirt, and until there was no shirt at all. It was reckless and stupid and they did it anyway.

And when he kissed her sweetly through his rolled-down window in front of her parent’s lawn, she couldn’t help her decision. “I’ve been both this year,” she said, laying soft kisses on Bellamy’s lips. “Naughty – “ she licked his full lower lip, and breathed into a kiss – “and nice.”

“Leaving me now would be neither,” he groaned, and Clarke grinned, touching their foreheads together.

"Well then, guess I'll have to try again tomorrow."

He looked up at her, his dark eyes somber and affectionate. There was a promise there, as honest as Bellamy always was.

"Tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entry totally got away from me. I don't know how it was possible to get so lost in telling a story for NAUGHTY/NICE AU and not have it involve smut, but whatever, I kind of threw some in at the end? I enjoyed thinking through this unbetaed, jumpy little story, and I hope you enjoyed reading it :-) Merry Christmas Eve's Eve.


	7. DAY SEVEN: jasper the bellarke fanboy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas, so prepare for disappointment.

It started in his tent, with a vicious frowny face.

“I just got chewed out by not one – but _two_ of our leaders,” Jasper griped, glaring darkly at the tent door which Bellamy and Clarke had just vacated.

“You did literally turn two of our guns into water pistols,” Monty pointed out, unhelpfully.

“I know that!”

Monty was stretched out on his bed, brows raised. “So then what’s the problem?”

Jasper’s fists curled inside his jacket pockets. “The point is that all I want for Christmas is mom and dad off my back.”

“A – they’re not out parents, b – Christmas is like three months awa—“

Jasper shushed him very loudly. “Not the point!” he claimed. “Look, we’ve been on the ground for what – a few months now? And everything’s going _fine_. Better than fine. The only people who refuse to notice are those two idiots, and frankly, I for one am getting sick of it!”

Monty didn’t have anything to add. He went back to reading an instruction manual he’d found in the dropship. Jasper looked away.

“The point is that we need them to realize how safe things are. Frankly, we need a distraction.”

“We _need_ to find something more productive to do with our time than start water gun fights.”

“No,” Jasper countered, his mind ticking. “Something else.”

He went to the door and pulled up the flap, scanning the camp. He saw them a few hundred yards away, filling up water bottles and stocking supplies. Clarke passed Bellamy a full bottle of distilled rain water, but Bellamy fumbled it; half of it went spilling down his shirt. Clarke automatically started to pat his shirt dry, but after a heartbeat, Bellamy was brushing her away and looking like – even from a distance – he was going red in the face.

Jasper’s grin spread like it was his birthday all over again. “Hey, how far away is Valentine’s Day?” he crowed back to his friend.

“Seriously?” Monty answered, which meant: far away.

Christmas was closer…maybe, what, six, seven weeks? For these two jerks, Christmas was about to come early.

***

It took longer than he’d hoped to get the Santa suit together, and even longer to find something that wasn’t pine needles and pinecones to fill it. His belly would have angry red scratches on it for days.

“Ho, ho, ho!” he called out, cradling his overlarge belly as he waddled through the camp. “Who has been a good boy this year? Who has been a good girl? Monroe, you have been very, very good. In fact, you have been…very good you should see me later, Monroe.”

Monroe punched him in the diaphragm.

***

“Ho…ho…ho…” Jasper wheezed, still trying to maintain the visage of jolliness. “Bellamy…just who I wanted to see…”

“Jasper what’re you doing,” Bellamy groaned, eyebrow cocked.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Well, actually, before you said ho ho ho I thought you were trying to smuggle something into your tent.”

Jasper looked down at his bulbous belly, hoping that the hallucinogenic berries were still invisible inside his bedding.

“No, I’m just creating a mood,” he grunted. “Christmas is coming early to all us delinquents. In fact – we are going to host a holiday party this year! In fact, it’s going to be – it’s going to be tonight!”

“A party?” Bellamy deadpanned. “Have you talked to Clarke about this?”

“I don’t have to talk to you guys every time I want to throw a - !” Jasper stopped himself, taking a deep breath to calm down. “What I meant to say is – yes, and she’s on board.”

***

“A party? Did you talk to Bellamy about this?”

Jasper nearly raked his own face with frustration. “ _Yes,_ ” he whined. “And since we’re going to be dancing at this party he told me to tell you to wear something nice.”

A flush started at Clarke’s neck. “Excuse me?”

“Yes,” Jasper started saying, speaking almost entirely out of his butt. “He told me to tell you that you always look nice, but since this is a special occasion and all, and since he’s dressing up, he thought you might enjoy matching him.”

He squinted one eye at her, trying to tell whether he’d said the right thing.

“He said that?”

God, what gullible leaders they had.

“Yeah, he said he’s wearing…green.”

***

“Bellamy!” Jasper shouted, waddling back to his tent. “Wear something green!”

***

Just before dusk, Bellamy was close to cackling with glee. Not only was there mistletoe hidden _everywhere_ , but they’d made a sort of cider by taking a huge batch of hooch and adding some juniper berries and cranberries they’d had lying around. Some of the girls knew some Christmas carols, and he’d crafted some very gentle hallucinogens that dissolved in anything, particularly stew.

Now all he had to do was wait.

Clarke showed up first. She’d rigged some juniper leaves in her braided hair. Whatever. Green. He knew those idiots were into each other.

He waddled over to her, belly still sitting like a beach ball in front of his torso.

“Clarke!” he called out, getting her attention. “You look _radiant_ , I might say. Come with me, let me show you what we’ve set up.”

The idiot followed him through camp, and he maneuvered her way too easily to just below some hidden mistletoe. She never even looked up.

“This is really nice, Jasper, really nice. I think you’re right; people really needed this.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he was saying, scanning the crowd. Bellamy popped up in the middle of it, a green shirt under his jacket. “Hey! Bellamy! Over here!”

Bellamy spied them and walked over, and damn it if they both weren’t a little bashful in his presence.

“Don’t you both look nice,” he said. “And – oh my gosh – what do my wondering eyes but appear?” He pointed above their heads, and both Bellamy and Clarke looked up to find his trap. “Mistletoe? Clarke, babe, I would totally kiss you but – “ he shoved a handful of nuts into his mouth, and doing so was his first mistake. “I just ate, so. Bellamy? Would you?”

Bellamy looked Clarke over, shrugged a little as if to ask whether it was okay, and then Clarke turned her chin so she could accept his chaste kiss on the cheek.

“Aw now wasn’t that sweet,” Jasper cooed, realizing that the taste in his mouth was alarmingly familiar. “Maybe next time on the mouth though, yeah? Punch anyone?”

_Oh shit_ , he realized, waddling toward the liquor trough. _There goes half my berries._

***

He got the music started, but before anyone could start dancing he was in the middle of the floor waving people off.

“Hey it’s my Christmas it’s my Christmas,” he groused, pushing someone away. “And I say!” he called out, attracting a crowd. “That we have our fearless leaders start us in a dance!” The crowd seemed less than enthused, and Jasper’s berries were starting to kick in. “ _Leaders dance_ ,” he chanted. “ _Leaders, dance. Leaders, dance!_ ” The rest of the lemmings in camp joined in, and soon Bellamy and Clarke were being pushed to the dance floor and towards each other. “ _Leaders, dance!”_ everyone shouted, and no one relented until Clarke and Bellamy had their hands on each other, assuming the position of a polite waltz.

“Awww,” Jasper whined, wanting something more lewd.

“Hey you shut your face, Jasper!” Bellamy yelled in warning. The music swelled, and Bellamy led Clarke around the makeshift dance floor in slow, measured steps. He wasn’t the best or the worst dancer in the world, which meant that he counted the beats in his head under scrutiny.

People started to join in, which was fine and according to plan. The minute the first song ended though, Jasper was sure to be at Clarke’s elbow so he could point above their heads again.

“Uh oh,” he cooed, not at all sorry. “Mistletoe! You guys gotta be better about looking up.”

“What the hell, Jasper!” Clarke protested.

Jasper shrugged in mock-innocence. “Hey, I know what you’re thinking, I wouldn’t want to kiss him either.”

“No,” she backtracked. “It’s not that, it’s just – “

Clarke looked up at Bellamy, he shrugged one shoulder, and they kissed probably the way nuns kiss babies.

Jasper blew a raspberry and turned down his thumb. “Booo.”

***

The berries had definitely kicked in, and Jasper’s cheek was swollen where Raven had slapped him, but he was still sitting off to the side waiting for people to sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted from old Saint Jaspernick this year.

Which is why it was such a surprise when Clarke carefully ambled up to him and drew his attention.

“How’s the cheek?”

Jasper shrugged helplessly. “Dunno,” he answered, truthfully. Clarke bent at the waist and examined him.

“You gotta tone it down,” she murmured, for his ears only. Jasper barely turned his head in her direction, and then their noses almost touched. She didn’t move away, but Jasper pulled back a bit so he could see just the one of her. “The me and Bellamy stuff, you gotta tone it down.”

Jasper grinned stupidly. “Seems to me,” he said, his voice a little slurred. “I gotta turn it _up_. Owchie mama.”

She frowned at him, and that’s when Jasper saw it out of the corner of his eye – Bellamy, wearing green, maybe fifty feet away. So this is when he made his third mistake.

Jasper leaned forward, and he kissed Clarke Griffin.

The kiss didn’t last long. Clarke pulled away really quickly, and Bellamy’s fist connected with his jaw – “Not that one not my bad one!” – just as fast. It sent him sprawling to the ground, but the second the back of his head hit the dirt he felt his whole body relax. _Finally._

***

Jasper woke up early the next morning, feeling like crap run over – _like the reindeer Grandma ran over, gotta remember that song_ – but at least more sober than he’d been previously. Dawn was just breaking throughout the camp, but since Monty had axed the idea of peeing inside the tent, Jasper knew he had to get outside.

The sky was bright and gray, and he walked toward the fence perimeter to find a place to relieve his stuffed bladder. Just as he hit midstream, he heard noises from behind him, and he turned quickly enough to see a tousled blond head of hair emerge from someone’s tent. Jasper stopped peeing immediately, and he knew he would probably get a bowel obstruction when he saw the distinctive head of Bellamy Blake join the first head, scan the surrounding area, and then kiss the blond head pretty thoroughly for people who hadn’t yet brushed their teeth.

_Holy…shit._

He turned around completely, totally ignorant to the way he was totally exposed.

Clarke and Bellamy were going at it like hungry teenagers, and when they pulled apart it was with chaste kisses, conspiring glances, and then Clarke skipped off toward the dropship.

Those little turds were going to pretend they hadn’t hooked up! What a crock of - !

Jasper stuffed himself back into his pants and zipped. He marched down to Bellamy’s tent, and almost earned another fist to the face when he snuck up on his friend.

“You serious with this shit?” he accused. “You think you guys can hide this crap from me? From the whole camp?”

Bellamy looked furious. “Jasper,” he growled. “We’ve been hiding ‘this crap’ for weeks. So _shut up_ already and get back to bed.”

Bellamy ducked into his own tent, effectively ending the conversation. Jasper thought about relieving the rest of his bladder on Bellamy’s tent. His jaw was already throbbing though.

_Well shit_ , he thought. _Merry Christmas to me._


	8. DAY NINE: baking xmas treats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas, so prepare to eat more than you thought you would.

“I wouldn’t eat those,” Clarke suggested, leaning into Bellamy’s peripheral vision. “Pretty sure Jasper and Monty made those.”

Bellamy looked at them in a whole different light. “Right,” he said, putting the cookies down. “Thanks.”

The coming of the Arkers brought many good new things, but the obvious highlight was the significant increase in food quality. Generations of people from the sky knew how to make impromptu ovens, use herbs and spices, and how to simmer meat on a spit until tender and not merely _brown._ Christmas had come with the return of their friends from Mount Weather, a tentative treaty with the Grounders, and a coming feast. There was definitely a reason to celebrate.

Bellamy and Clarke fell into step next to each other, and one or the other guided them through the camp as it set up for a peaceful holiday. “It’s strange, not feeling on edge all the time.”

Clarke agreed. “I’m pretty sure my blood pressure might have actually returned to normal now.”

Bellamy didn’t quite know enough about blood pressures to understand her point, but he went along with it with a playful chuckle.

Someone’s mother stopped the two of them, wielding a barrel of something full of white powder. “You two,” she demanded. “Come with me.”

Clarke and Bellamy exchanged glances, and then did as they were told.

***

“Tell me again why this is better than what we had four months ago?” Bellamy grumbled, flour up to his elbows.

Clarke glared darkly at the back of their slave master’s head. “Maybe later.”

With his impressive forearms, Bellamy had been put in charge of kneading the dough. It was Clarke’s job to roll out the dough he kneaded and punch little holes for turning into…well, something. Something made from flour, sugar, water, and other stuff Clarke didn’t recognize.

She just didn’t want to be wasting dough again, like the dragon-lady had so peevishly told her during her last pass through.

“Any chance this crap even tastes good?” he asked, and Clarke cut her gaze in his direction. This whole _do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do_ attitude of their kitchen leader was starting to grate on her.

“Only one way to find out.”

She ripped off a small piece of dough and brought it to her mouth. “Wait,” she paused. “Are we even supposed to be eating this? I mean, what if it’s poisonous until cooked?”

“Are we even going to cook this?” Bellamy asked. “I thought we were just going to roll it out until one of us died.”

Clarke smirked.

He tilted his chin in her direction. “Hey, give it here.”

She checked to see where their overlord was, and then she popped the piece past Bellamy’s lips.

It shouldn’t have – honestly, it was so embarrassing – but she felt a little fissure of electricity at the feeling of his lower lip dragging on the underside of her finger. She’d felt the moist inside and smooth outside of his lips, and if there was a nerve ending stretched between her finger and her pelvis she felt it.

Note to self: don’t do that again.

She snuck a glance at him from the corner of her eye, and found Bellamy considering the taste of the dough. He chewed, thoughtfully and silently, until Clarke wasn’t sure he was paying attention to her anymore.

“Well?” she asked.

He licked his lips. “It’s pretty damn good.”

Clarke checked where the master was.

“Do me now,” she asked, tilting her chin in Bellamy’s direction. Her pulse quickened when she realized she could have easily fed herself, but that she hadn’t for reasons. Probably reasons to do with that loin nerve. Probably the same reason people took longer showers than was strictly necessary: because it felt good.

“Open up,” he whispered back, and Clarke obliged with parted lips.

A dollop of raw dough fell against her lips, and Clarke chased Bellamy’s fingers to get the rest of it in her mouth. Again the electricity; now it was Bellamy’s fingers in her lips and against the tip of her tongue, and the sensitive interior of her lips felt the rough pads of his fingers, the smoother underside between knuckles.

“So?” he asked, when Clarke had been silent for a few seconds.

She was having trouble coming up with a strict answer. The dough was sweet, just the hint of salt and spice. Bellamy’s skin was far more complex and distracting. “It’s good.”

So she wondered: did she _like_ Bellamy Blake? It had been so long since she’d even thought of romance, not since Finn died. The ease that she thought of his death in the same breath as she thought of having a crush on Bellamy seemed indicative of something. Their watch guard passed by again, and with the back of her, Clarke snuck another glance at Bellamy, who was working so earnestly, focused on his task. His muscled arms folded and pushed the dough rhythmically, and perhaps for the first time she could think of, she wondered whether she was attracted to him.

***

It was much later, and Clarke was holding her _Heckutsung_ – a flaky sort of pastry filled with ground nuts and honey. It was vaguely in the shape of a heart, and there was a single blond nut pressed into its center.

And she was supposed to find someone to share it with.

The Grounders had few holiday traditions left over from centuries past, but this was one of their favorites. Raven had shared hers with Wick, Jasper and Monty had split theirs and shoved the rest of it in each other’s face, and Abby had amicably traded halves with Kane.

What was bothering Clarke was who she wanted to share hers with.

Thinking about Finn had wasted a sorrowful hour, but now she was stuck approaching someone who’d been there all along, a person who she’d spent a good long time despising, but who was undoubtedly her most reliable friend and ally.

Bellamy was standing off to the side, trying to be inconspicuous and surly at the same time.

In the end, or rather, in this uncertain beginning, the walk was easy.

“I hate this stupid tradition,” he griped, dissuasively glaring at a girl with twin braids. She turned away so quickly her hair swung out like twin ropes.

Clarke assumed a position next to him, and turned to look where he was looking. A sort of dance had broken out in Camp Jaha. Clarke didn’t feel like dancing, and it seemed as though Bellamy wasn’t interested either. “Those buns we made turned out well,” she said, mostly for something to say. Their yeasty rolls were a distant memory of grinning glances over their feast.

Bellamy hummed his agreement, eyes hawkish for other people who might have found him.

“Been popular tonight?” she asked, cutting her gaze to him without turning her head.

Bellamy scoffed derisively. “The problem with these damn things is that there’s not a good way to say no. I think I’ve had like eight halves already out of pity.”

Clarke swallowed. She felt that uncomfortable loss of circulation to her arms and feet, because her body was preparing its _fight or flight_ defense mechanism against her better judgment.

“Do you think you could stomach another?”

There was a strained silence. For a heart-stopping moment Clarke was afraid he hadn’t heard her and she would have to repeat herself. A quick glance showed that his gaze had lost its focus, and his lips had parted. She didn’t know how to interpret that reaction, and for a moment she almost wished he’d just grumbled an offhand _Yeah, sure_ , and taken it without thought. It would mean that he was taking her half as a friend.

The fact that he was still not responding let her think that he felt it too, back in the makeshift kitchen, that odd spark of electricity. Maybe it hadn’t only been her.

Bellamy turned more fully in her direction, and Clarke mimicked him so he could examine the intentions and fears written on her face. His dark eyes glittered in the limited firelight, and she watched as his attention raked her whole face, and then he swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice a little brusque, as if his throat was dry. “Yeah, okay.” His hand went to his pocket, and he pulled out his own, intact offering. Clarke felt her stomach flip, wondering what that meant.

Clarke withdrew her own _Heckutsung_ – she thought it roughly translated to _heart song_ – and unwrapped it from its cloth. It broke in half easily, and she passed the piece with the embedded nut to Bellamy. He stared into her eyes as if hungry for eye contact, and then he looked down so he could pass her the bigger half of his.

They looked into each other’s eyes as they took the first bite as was customary, and then Clarke averted her gaze because she felt her cheeks warm.

They finished in silence, and Clarke felt her heart beating faster inside her chest.


	9. DAY TEN: searching for a christmas tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Christmas, so prepare to do as you’re told.

“Clarke, please, what is wrong with this one.”

He’s holding the saw – the only saw at camp, actually – and really trying to be patient. Clarke turns just her head to see which one he’s pointing out to her, and frowns consideringly.

“No. Not good enough.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes dramatically when he sees the back of her and nearly kicks the tree.

“This is our first Christmas on the ground, Bellamy!” she reminds him from a hundred feet ahead, for maybe the seventh time. He could almost recite what she says next. “It has to be perfect!”

He gives the rejected tree a withering look. What happened to putting aside differences at Christmas, huh? What happened to ignoring people’s faults, yeah, maybe seeing the inner beauty…or…whatever. He follows after her, one hand on the gun slung over his shoulder, the other swinging the saw by his side.

They’ve been on this hunt for almost an hour. She’d almost gone on her own, but when someone stops by your tent when you’ve just woken up and asks you where the _saw_ is…you wake up fast. Fast and curious.

She’s within reaching distance when she speaks again.

“I like this one – “

Bellamy stops short.

“ – well, no, except for the bird living in it.”

Bellamy lifts his gun halfway. “I can take care of the bird,” he offers, and he appreciates that Clarke smirks. When she starts walking away, looking at some other tree, he follows. “I’m serious! It would kind of be a win-win: lunch and a tree.”

Clarke laughs, and Bellamy grins in spite of himself.

“It has to be perfect,” she insists, and she redirects her attention to the task at hand. Bellamy follows with a sigh.

She darts so quickly through the grove of evergreens, astute gaze evaluating the fullness and shape of each tree, finding all the gaps where the branches hadn’t grown evenly. She’s keenly discriminative, very shrewd in her decision-making skills, and even though it’s nice to be around her the chore is starting to drag on him.

“Oh, Bellamy,” she murmurs, and the awe in her voice draws his attention. “This is it,” she says a little louder. “This is the one.”

He finds her around the next tree, but she doesn’t turn. Her gaze is riveted to a six-foot shrub.

Her voice wilts a little. “Oh, but – “

“But?” Bellamy panics. He doesn’t want to hear any more _buts_. He’s been ready to use this saw for fifty-eight minutes and damn if she won’t let him.

Clarke shifts her gaze from the bottom of the tree to him, her cheek puckered with a frown.

“The trunk’s a little thick. I don’t know if we’ll cut it down on our own.”

A thread of manly pride weaves through his chest.

“I think I can handle it,” he assures her, chin dipped down so she knows he’s serious.

Clarke senses the challenge in his voice, and she grins at him as if he’s being predictable.

“Well?” she asks, gesturing at the tree with a grin exposing her straight teeth. “Go on then.”

He hands her the gun. “You watch for trouble,” he says, voice heavy on the word _trouble_. She grins broadly and lifts her eyebrows as if to say _okay then._

Four minutes later, Clarke is having an unhelpful fit of the giggles.

Bellamy is shaking his hand, which is covered by a foul-smelling sticky substance that is making this whole job difficult. “ _God damnit_ ,” he swears emphatically, and it sends Clarke teetering.

“It’s not funny,” she says, and Bellamy agrees with a dark look. He’s half under the base of the tree, and his parka is soaked through because of the thin layer of snow. It’s an uncomfortable angle from which to saw, and her distracting giggling isn’t helping.

He grunts, trying to work the saw through again. It’s difficult, and kind of a workout. “Ugh, come here,” he demands, and Clarke obliges with a grin.

Bellamy drops the saw and shakes his arm, shaking his limb through the parka. Clarke instinctually helps him remove it, and she holds the wet jacket over her abdomen while Bellamy refocuses on his task. Without the bulky layer he’s able to work a little better, and he gets almost halfway through before he starts sweating. There’s sap on the blade, and his hands, but the sooner they get this over with the sooner they can go back to camp where there is fun stuff like _food_ and _not this_ – it’s pretty significant inspiration.

Bellamy stands up when he’s pretty sure the job is done. He anchors his dirty hands on his hips while he tries to breathe, oblivious to the cold despite his t-shirt. It’s the one with the loose neck, and the material is pretty flimsy. Considering the work-out of hacking through a four-inch piece of wood with a flimsy blade while lying on your side, he doesn’t care so much.

He looks to Clarke, and catches her looking at the sweat beading on his upper arms.

“I’m fine,” he says, shrugging off the sweat. She diverts her gaze to his face. Bellamy sniffs against the wetness in the air. “D’you want to do the honors?” He gestures limply to the tree.

“The honors?”

Bellamy runs the back of his hand against his nose. “Yeah, it should tip over pretty easy. Go for it.”

She checks to make sure he’s not joking, and approaches the tree. “Wait,” she says, and she puts the gun on the ground. Bellamy doesn’t feel a pressing urge to pick it up, so he doesn’t. “So what, I just – I just push it?”

There’s something about her indecision; the woman could make choices so quickly that would affect their whole camp, but a tree is daunting to her. “No,” he laughs. “You give it a kiss. Yeah you just push it.”

Clarke turns back toward the tree, and tries to find footing between the branches. Her hands wind into the brush, and she finds the trunk. “Ugh!” she groans. “Bellamy, it’s sticky!”

He laughs.

“C’mon, Princess!” he goads. She sends him a stern look.

Clarke starts to apply pressure, and he sees her left boot press into the mud on a long left leg. In fact, from this angle…he catches himself looking at her for a brief moment not as Clarke, but as a woman.

“Ah! Bellamy – ah!”

Bellamy’s gaze snaps up her body, and he realizes with a lunge that she’s starting to tip. “Clarke!”

It’s too late. Clarke tumbles forward with the tree, hands tangled in the leaves. She doesn’t lay out quite as poorly as she could have, some sort of coordination letting her legs get in the way of complete catastrophe.

“Clarke are you okay?”

She answers right away, but not with a lot of conviction. “Yeah.”

And then:

“I think my hands are stuck.”

Bellamy realizes that his gut reaction is really unhelpful. Honestly, he does. But the giggle starts in the back of his throat, and it tickles. It tickles in his nose, too, when he starts to openly laugh, and she lets him, because she recognizes the humor in it all even though the brunt of the joke is on her.

Clarke folds her legs at weird angles, having to spread her hips so as to find a seated position from which to be mocked.

Bellamy’s laughter abates with not insignificant effort.

“I’m serious!” she says, her voice not necessarily pissed about it. “Bellamy, my hands are stuck!”

The smirk still stretches into his cheeks, but he finds enough muscle to close his lips. Bellamy hunkers over, then crouches on his heels to examine the damage. “It’s not like your skin is going to come off,” he argues. Her open blue eyes are maybe eight inches away, which he’s only somewhat aware of. “They’re stuck,” she insists, and so Bellamy swivels to get a better look. He scoops up a handful of dirt that they’d unearthed, and he dusts it over the hands she has attached to the tree trunk.

His fingers curl into her palm and under her hand. They work between her skin and the rough bark of the tree.

“You still sure you want this tree?”

Bellamy turns his head when she doesn’t respond right away, and he does it again, or really, she does – he catches her staring at him.

“What, do I have junk on my face, or something?”

She licks her lips, and looks away. “No,” she says, her voice a little hoarse, as if her throat was dry. Bellamy rolls his eyes, confused, and goes back to the task at hand. He frees her finger by finger, and when her palms pry away from the bark she retracts them to her body with a wince.

“Ahh, I think I got a splinter.”

Bellamy smirks. “Again, I ask: are you really sure you want this tree?”

She purses her lips and looks at him through her lashes. “Are you really sure you want to go through the trouble of finding another one?”

Bellamy looks at their fallen companion. “On second though, I think this is the best tree in the forest. Nay, on Earth, probably.”

Clarke laughs softly under her breath. “Help me get up,” she asks, and Bellamy stands and offers her his hand. She takes it, ignoring how dirty they both are, and together they propel her into an upright position. Clarke goes to take her hand away, and it happens again – they stick.

“Oh you have got to be _kidding me_.”

Clarke giggles again, and with gentle tugging on both their ends they come apart relatively easily.

“This Christmas had better be worth it,” Bellamy warns, his tone grumpy.

Clarke raises an eyebrow at him. “What so you want a pony then?”

Bellamy grins. He can’t really help it. “More like some super hot sex.”

He knows why he said it when Clarke’s jaw drops, and she swats him in the chest.

He knows why he shouldn’t have said it when her hand sticks to his shirt.

“Ah!” she exclaims, pulling back, dragging Bellamy’s shirt with her. Bellamy laughs (their situation really is totally ridiculous), and he swats at her jacket. It sticks. They both pull against the other and then stumble half a step toward each other, so they’re separated by mere inches of space. She looks up at him, incredulous, and then she smacks his behind.

Bellamy laughs – a low, throaty chuckle that resonates in the air – and then he smacks her ass as well. Clarke wiggles until her hand is off his shirt (it rips only slightly at the neck) and then she smacks his cheek. It sticks. Bellamy wrenches his hand off her ass and slaps her outer thigh, dragging it up the outside of his.

“Say uncle!” Bellamy goads.

“Never!” she calls back, and she launches herself up so he has to catch her weight.

She kisses him.

One hand stuck to his cheek with sap, the other stuck to his butt, she kisses him. At first it feels like another slap…and then he finds himself leaning into it…and then he finds himself deepening the kiss.

His hands are stuck to her thigh and the front of her top, and trying to pull his hands towards her face is futile. They kiss where they can kiss, tilting their heads to keep their lips together. The strain of holding her up is nothing. She curves her legs around his waist, making hills of her shoulders as they curve in to one another.

They break apart totally breathless, gasping in time with their racing hearts.

“What…what was that,” Bellamy utters, voice low and raspy.

Clarke licks her lips, and leans back, until Bellamy lets her relax to the ground.

“That was hunting for the perfect Christmas Tree.”

“Right,” Bellamy answers, and they don’t pry their hands away all at once. “I think I like hunting for trees.”


End file.
